scholarly journals Reconciling civil liberties and public health in the response to COVID-19

FACETS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 887-898
Author(s):  
Colleen M. Flood ◽  
Vanessa MacDonnell ◽  
Bryan Thomas ◽  
Kumanan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Discourse

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges governments face in balancing civil liberties against the exigencies of public health amid the chaos of a public health emergency. Current and emerging pandemic response strategies may engage diverse rights grounded in civil liberties, including mobility rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to liberty and security of the person. As traditionally conceived, the discourses of civil rights and public health rest on opposite assumptions about the burden of proof. In the discourse of civil and political rights of the sort guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the onus rests on government to show that any limitation on rights is justified. By contrast, public health discourse centers on the precautionary principle, which holds that intrusive measures may be taken—lockdowns, for example—even in the absence of complete evidence of the benefits of the intervention or of the nature of the risk. In this article, we argue that the two principles are not so oppositional in practice. In testing for proportionality, courts recognize the need to defer to governments on complex policy matters, especially where the interests of vulnerable populations are at stake. For their part, public health experts have incorporated ideas of proportionality in their evolving understanding of the precautionary principle. Synthesizing these perspectives, we emphasize the importance of policy agility in the COVID-19 response, ensuring that measures taken are continually supported by the best evidence and continually recalibrated to avoid unnecessary interference with civil liberties.

From Property Rights to Liberty Rights: We the Corporations, A Review Essay

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
State Action ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
We The People

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live one's life fully, such as the freedom of religion, speech, or association. The vim in Winkler's argument is that the court blurred this distinction when it applied liberty rights to nonprofit corporations and then, through a series of twentieth-century rulings, corporations were able to advance greater claims to liberty rights. Ultimately, those liberty rights have been employed to strike down significant bipartisan regulations, such as campaign finance laws, which were intended to advance democratic participation in the political process. At its core, this book asks, to what extent do “we the people” rule corporations and to what extent do they rule us?

Balancing benefits and potential risks of vaccination: the precautionary principle and the law of unintended consequences

2021 ◽  
pp. bmjebm-2021-111773
Author(s):  
David Robert Grimes
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Risk And Benefit

Vaccination is a life-saving endeavour, yet risk and uncertainty are unavoidable in science and medicine. Vaccination remains contentious in the public mind, and vaccine hesitancy is a serious public health issue. This has recently been reignited in the discussion over potential side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, and the decision by several countries to suspend measures such as the AstraZeneca vaccine. In these instances, the precautionary principle has often been invoked as a rationale, yet such heuristics do not adequately weigh potential harms against real benefits. How we analyse, communicate and react to potential harms is absolutely paramount to ensure the best decisions and outcomes for societal health, and maintaining public confidence. While balancing benefits and risks is an essential undertaking, it cannot be achieved without due consideration of several other pertinent factors, especially in the context of vaccination, where misguided or exaggerated fears have in the past imperilled public health. While well meaning, over reactions to potential hazards of vaccination and other health interventions can have unintended consequences, and cause lingering damage to public trust. In this analysis, we explore the challenges of assessing risk and benefit, and the limitations of the precautionary principle in these endeavours. When risk is unclear, cautious vigilance might be a more pragmatic and useful policy than reactionary suspensions.

scholarly journals Theoretical reflection on the impact of globalization processes on civil rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (SE) ◽  
pp. 309-326
Author(s):  
Ehsan Madmalil ◽  
Fereydoun Akbarzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact

The concept of citizenship is one of the old key concepts in political philosophy that has been reproduced in various forms since the formation of classical political philosophy up to modern times within the theory set forth in this type of theoretical philosophy. So, pre-modern theory, modern theory and postmodern theory can be noted. The concept of citizenship is an idea which governs the right of modern human and was emerged in the Western Europe and is a product of modern politics. Accepting Legal and political rights and duties is raised by citizenship status, its main foundation and the basic idea of the concept. In the contemporary world, citizenship has been interested more than other societies. The question that comes to mind here is that how is the situation of civil rights in the era of theoretical terms in globalization? In response to the question hypothesis is that with globalization, citizenship in its modern form that was enclosed in the geography of the national government has lost its sense and civil rights embodied in the discourses that are outside the reach of state law. This study aimed to investigate the impact of globalization on the civil right and conceptual evolution theoretically, as contemporary theorists have theorized it. Research findings indicate the "global citizenship" as a concept is emerging in the era of globalization as the result of rethinking of citizenship in the modern age. The methodology of study is analysis - descriptive, this means that the concept of civil right is described and then the theoretical changes in the era of globalization will be analyzed.

scholarly journals Book Review: Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties: Revised and Expanded Edition, 2nd ed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Seth Kershner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right

Occupy Wall Street. Black Lives Matter. The #MeToo movement. Over the past decade, the United States has seen a surge in activism around civil rights, broadly defined as the right to be free from discrimination and unequal treatment in arenas such as housing, the workplace, and the criminal justice system. At times, as when activists are arrested at a protest, calls for civil rights can also be the occasion for violations of civil liberties—certain basic freedoms (e.g., freedom of speech) that are either enshrined in the Constitution or established through legal rulings. While civil rights are distinct from civil liberties, students often struggle to articulate these differences and appreciate the links between the two concepts. Complicating this distinction is the fact that historically reference materials have tended to cover either one or the other but not the two in combination. Combining these two concepts in one work is what makes a revised edition of the Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties so timely and valuable.

The Idea of Human Rights in Conditions of Hospital Treatment

2016 ◽  
pp. 1147-1165
Author(s):  
Bogusław Sygit ◽  
Damian Wąsik
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Hospital Treatment ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
European Court ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

The aim of this chapter is describing of the influence of universal human rights and civil liberties on the formation of standards for hospital care. The authors present definition of the right to life and the right to health. Moreover in the section it is discussed modern standards of hospital treatment under the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality. The authors discuss in detail about selected examples realization of human rights in the treatment of hospital and forms of their violation. During the presentation of these issues, the authors analyze a provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and use a number of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights issued in matters concerning human rights abuses in the course of treatment and hospitalization.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Jersey City ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Police Harassment ◽  
The Right ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union

This epilogue shows that Hague v. CIO had a legacy more complex than its reputation as a speech rights victory for workers and others over dictatorial city boss Frank Hague under the Bill of Rights. The American Civil Liberties Union and renamed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) immediately split over the decision’s ramifications. Moreover, while the ruling enlarged constitutional protection for the right of public assembly to the benefit of Jehovah’s Witnesses, civil rights demonstrators, and others, it did little to enhance picketing and other “labor speech,” or to shield union organizers from police harassment. And while the decision freed the CIO to organize in Jersey City, it did not destroy Mayor Hague, who accommodated CIO unions and was ousted later due to city politics.

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