The government's dual role in protecting civil liberties

Civil Liberties

The United States is a country founded on the notion of protected civil liberties. After all, the pioneers who came to the country in the 18th century were themselves fleeing from persecution and seeking the freedom to practice their religious beliefs and the right to discuss their diverging views in public.

Today, these freedoms are protected by law under the Bill of Rights. They serve to protect individual freedoms from encroachment by the government. It is largely through the Bill of Rights that the Constitution limits the government's powers over the rights of individuals (Levy 8).

This paper examines the dual role the government takes in approaching such freedoms. First is the passive role, where the law prescribes that the government limit its role in matters of individual civil liberties. This includes the hands-off policy the government is supposed to take in matters such as freedom of the press and privacy rights. The second part of the paper then examines the government's more active role in enabling people to practice their civil liberties. This includes affirmative action policies that help address the historic inequality in the treatment of minorities and women.

Passive role

During the early years of the country, many disputes centered around disagreements over slanderous newspaper articles or unruly public gatherings. Authorities then settled these issues through the applicable principles in the Bill of Rights, not through direct interference by the government. This general policy of non-interference has stood for over 200 years.

In cases of freedom of speech, for example, many government bodies and private citizens have raised concerns regarding the effects of violent media on viewers, particularly children. Most proponents of media regulations are also interested in protecting free speech and the free circulation of ideas. However, critics like Roger Kimball and his followers maintain that brutal and violent images in media generate violence within their viewers, by corrupting individual morals. Because of this, Kimball maintains that the government "also has an interest in protecting the moral sensibility of its citizens, especially the young" (21).

Despite the "greater good" orientation of this argument, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled in favor of ruled that any restrictions on free speech are unconstitutional. Free speech is consistently likened to a slippery slope. Once one form of expression - such as hate speech or violent images - is banned, other forms of restrictions inevitably follow.

Paul McMasters, a writer affiliated with the Freedom Forum, believes that not only are such restrictions unconstitutional. They are also unnecessary because Americans are capable of reading and watching depictions of violent or immoral behavior without "losing our minds or our morals" (22). Freedom and virtue are not mutually exclusive.

Recent technological advancements and growing fears of terrorism, however, are allowing government greater opportunities to widen their scope into other forms of civil liberties, such as the right to privacy.

Under the premise of the September 11 attacks, the government has passed several laws that many interpret as a growing intrusion into private activities over the Internet. For example, the Homeland Security Act has a specific provision that expands law enforcement's current ability to conduct Internet surveillance. Under this provision, law enforcement officials could go to Internet Service Providers like America Online and obtain information on and records of customer activity, even without a warrant. Other bills will allow representatives of the government to spy on Internet activities like e-mail, chatroom meetings and even webs surfing (Getz).

Like freedom of speech, the debate regarding abortion again touches on several conflicting ideas regarding civil liberties. Opponents of abortion, for example, charge that the government should protect the rights of the fetus, which now can be considered a person under several new laws. Proponents of abortion rights, on the other hand, argue that the decision to bear a child belongs to a pregnant woman alone. Forcing a woman to carry a child to term is an invasion of her right to privacy.

In 1970, the suit that became known as Roe v. Wade alleged that that Texas laws prohibiting abortion infringed upon Roe's "right to safe and adequate medical advice pertaining to the decision of whether to carry a given pregnancy to term" and also on "fundamental right of all women to choose whether to bear children." In addition, lawyer Sara Weddington charged that the anti-abortion statute infringed on Roe's constitutionally protected rights to privacy and the confidentiality of the physician-patient relationship, as protected under the Fourteenth Amendment (Guernsey 38).

Later, Weddington successfully argued the case in front of the Supreme Court. On June 22, 1973, the Supreme Court struck down all state laws regarding abortion and created one new law for the entire country. In the 7-2 ruling, the Court held that "the Constitution protects a fundamental 'right to privacy,' broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy" (cited in Guernsey 63). The Court ruled that on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment which protects individual civil liberties, an adult woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy was therefore guaranteed the by right to privacy.

Dual role

These examples illustrate the dual role the government plays in ensuring that every citizen is able to practice his or her civil liberties. On one hand, the government maintains a passive role by avoiding the semblance of any interference in the private affairs of its citizens. This helps to ensure basic freedoms, such as expression and privacy.

On the other hand, the government has to step in, as it has done in addressing the prevailing discrimination against minorities and women. In these cases, the government justifies its rulings on private matters like hiring and university applications because historically, these practices themselves have infringed on the civil rights of a significant segment of society.

These rights as articulated, however, are far from absolute. Throughout its history, the provisions regarding the civil liberties as ensconced in the Bill of Rights have been interpreted in many different ways.

Currently, for example, provisions of the Homeland Security Act have shown that the need for security is now taking precedence over the right to privacy. New laws that recognize a late-term fetus as a person have resulted in more legal challenges to a woman's privacy rights regarding pregnancy and abortion. Whether these challenges will result in new legal interpretations of the Bill of Rights, however, remains to be seen.