civil whats?

[asterroc]

I've known for a while that I had tags for both "civil liberties" and "civil rights." I'm not really sure why I created two separate ones, so I was about to go and lump them all together. Which got me to thinking, is there a distinction between the two terms? I really don't know, so if you do, help me out. :-P

Comments

[meredithanne42.livejournal.com]

There is a subtle difference, though I'm not sure that I could explain it, or that I understand it. I do know that at work, we talk about defending our "civil liberties" a lot, and wouldn't normally use "civil rights" as a substitute in an action alert.

I think "civil liberties" refers more to rights granted by the constitution, and "civil rights" have more to do with legalities born from judicial decisions or established codes/laws...which themselves are usually rooted in and formed from the constitution.

[q10.livejournal.com]

there's a lot of overlap, but the terms are sometimes used to describe things at odds with each other, as, for example, in various cases where forms of speech (a classic civil liberties issue) find themselves on the wrong side of civil rights type harassment policies.

more broadly (at least in current American usage - both terms have seen varied usage at different times and place) civil liberties are what the political theorists call negative liberties - rights to be able to do your thing without the government messing with you. civil rights are any rights provided to ensure your ability to participate in society on some kind of equal footing. so something can be both, but the terms have different coverage.

note that the above is intended as descriptive, different groups use the terms in different ways. when James Madison used the term ‘civil rights’, he almost certainly meant something more like what we'd call ‘civil liberties’, and the American Civil Liberties Union is very invested in issues on both sides of the distinction outlined above. and of course ‘civil rights’ has a lot of fairly recent historical baggage in terms of its association with particular movements and packages of issues.