Unalienable Rights Research Articles

Introduction: Antipolitics or Antinomianism?

Abstract In this introduction to part 3 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” the journal's editor argues that, apart from sortition, the best guarantees of safety in a democracy are, first, to augment judicial oversight of all political processes and, second, to exclude politicians from the process of selecting judges. “There can never be too much judicial interference,” he writes, “in what politicians regard as their domain.” The author reached this conclusion during attempts by the newly elected Israeli government, in the spring of 2023, to make itself absolute by eliminating checks on its conduct that the Supreme Court had been developing and applying since the 1950s. Traditional Jewry and Judaism being notoriously hypernomian, the resistance to legality on the part of the ruling coalition has conveyed an aura of antinomian heresy. The choice in Israel appears to be between antipolitics and antinomianism, rather than between Left and Right politically—and the antipolitical model in Israel of a superintendent judiciary and an autonomous attorney general is arguably superior to the American prototype, even from the perspective (“all men are created equal . . . , endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”) that we have come to regard as quintessentially American.

Data as common good.

Data are part of language, intelligence, description, knowledge production, politics, economics, medicine: they are the essential quantitative component of any message. The recent transformation of reality into data, however, has made data an economic commodity. But does the raw material of which knowledge is made - data - belong to the universe of the unalienable rights of the individual and of populations or to the global normativity of economy-goods? The transformation of data into proprietary goods has introduced into the rules of research the artificiality and complication of a contractual logic that transforms the qualitative-contextual component of projects into an unwelcome or disturbing guest and turns attention to formal details into a purely administrative exercise. The only possible solution is not to accept the blackmail of obeying the rigidity of rules that prevent a serious and responsible relationship with the problems of patients and real populations.

Legal recommendations and psychological advice sports administrators can implement in the next pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed sports administrators’ lack of crisis management preparedness and athletes, coaches, and support staff’s lack of mental preparedness for a pandemic. Sports administrators were in the unenviable position of having to protect the health of their athletes, staff, and the wider population by preventing the spread of the COVID-19 disease with restrictive policies, such as bio-bubbles and quarantines, while at the same time not restricting anyone’s liberty and unalienable rights to pursue happiness. This article informs sports administrators how to balance health instructions from regulatory bodies with measures protecting individual liberty. It provides sports administrator’s legal recommendations they can follow and psychological advice that they can pass on to their athletes, coaches, and support staff. The article also explains to coaches and support staff how to manage, and athletes how to successfully cope with, future bio-bubbles, quarantines, and the next pandemic.

Appropriation and the rewriting of rights

Abstract The protective reach of human rights has expanded over time. However, some have argued that this expansion constitutes illegitimate rights inflation, and for some conservative stakeholders, the modern development of rights has been at odds with their positions on issues such as reproductive rights and marriage equality. Against this backdrop, the Trump Administration launched the Commission on Unalienable Rights in 2019 to “reexamine” rights. It might be expected that such an initiative would reject human rights. However, it embraced rights discourse, positioned it as central to US values and policy, and called on the United States to pursue rights with “renewed vigor.” This article offers a decoding of this apparent embrace. We argue that rather than renewing commitments to rights, the Commission appropriated human rights. It reworked the human rights canon from within by elevating some rights over others, and by narrowing rights in line with conservative takes on where rights come from, who they should protect, and which rights matter. This article offers a framework for analyzing how appropriation happens, and where and in what ways it is contested. We identify four core elements to appropriation and spaces for challenging it: messenger and motive legitimacy; process legitimacy; substantive legitimacy; and norm diffusion. This framework makes visible the sites and processes of appropriation under the cover of protecting rights, that in practice seek to roll back understandings of right and their sources. While the Commission was disavowed by the subsequent US administration, conservative efforts to redefine rights are ongoing—including through promotion of the Commission’s work—and share many of the same normative underpinnings of the Commission’s establishment and rollout. Making apparent the strategies and mechanisms of appropriation through this case-study therefore enables recognition of future conservative moves to appropriate rights and provides insights into how to resist such efforts.

On First Reading Thomas Dixon Jr. in 2021: What Racist Fiction from Reconstruction Can Teach Us About Building Multiracial Democracy Today

On First Reading Thomas Dixon Jr. in 2021: What Racist Fiction from Reconstruction Can Teach Us About Building Multiracial Democracy Today

Public-School Teachers and Social Media: Understanding Free Speech and Constitutional Limitations

Constitutional protections are unalienable rights in the United States for most citizens. However, public employees are held to a higher standard due to set legal precedents regarding First Amendment protections and rights. Free speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association are foundational rights of the United States for citizens working in the private sector, and public sector with untaught conditions. Limitations imposed on public-school teachers are historically difficult to decipher and navigate. Due to substantial technological advances in nearly every aspect of modern society, interpretations of current precedents may not be inherently viewed as applicable in regards to public-school teachers’ freedom of expression relating to individual social media usage.
 In this research paper, various landmark decisions, including Pickering v. BOE Township (1968) and Melzer v. BOE New York City (2003), are analyzed and applied to current societal concerns relating to public-school teachers’ social media usage and content. Recommendations for public-school teachers and administration encompass modeling pro-social behaviors, comprehensive social media policies, enhancing digital citizenship, and ethical decision-making practices.

Representation of Human Rights Violations by the Security Agents in Agyei-Agyiri’s Unexpected Joy at Dawn, Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Ellison’s Invisible Man

Purpose: Human rights violation is a universal phenomenon, a constant presence in the news and in daily lives. Such violations are occasioned by the powerful lording it over the powerless, infringing upon the victims’ unalienable rights. Human rights violations by the security agents seem to be pervasive in the recent time, resulting in the ubiquity of protests against the security agents for their wanton violations of human rights. Just recently, there were protest against police security bill in Paris, the protest against the killing of Eyad al-Hallaq by Israeli police, the protest against the jailing of Kremlin Foe of Russia, the protest against the murder of George Floyd of America and the recent EndSARS protest in Nigeria. The purpose of this study was to explore the civil and political rights in the selected novels and how such rights have been violated by the security agents.
 Methodology: The research adopted literary analysis, deploying the Marxist critical discourse which concerns itself with the struggles between classes. The reason for this choice is that literature as a major part of the superstructure is determined by the forces that make up a society’s base.
 Findings: Drawing from the selected texts and from the different reviews of literature, the research finds out, among other things, that the security agents are among the most active violators of human rights. The study also found that human rights violations are everywhere, and not an exclusive reserve of any nation, civilized or uncivilized.
 Recommendations: Giving the importance of security agents in safeguarding lives and property of citizens, the governments should include courses on human rights issues in the curriculum/training of the security agents. Different governments of the world should strengthen the aspects of fundamental human rights entrenched in their constitutions and give that hallowed section its pride of place to avoid chaos, anarchy, violent protests or even war that could result from violating the citizens’ rights. Governments should set up independent and impartial judicial bodies to adjudicate on the cases of human rights violations by the security agents. The citizens need to be sufficiently sensitized on the operative mechanisms of the security agents to make them know when they are crossing their boundaries or initiating actions capable of compelling the security agents to violate their rights. Literature should be made a compulsory subject in schools and colleges.

The Commission on Unalienable Rights: Where Do We Go from Here?

The Commission on Unalienable Rights: Where Do We Go from Here?

Dwelling above the Veil—“Double Consciousness” of African Americans in the Piano Lesson

August Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson reveals the dilemma of African Americans in dealing with their ethnic and cultural heritage, which stirs a discussion about what attitude should African Americans take toward their history and culture and how to build their identity. “Double Consciousness”, developed by W. E. B. Du Bois, describes the fractured and conflicted mental state of African Americans in the process of self-exploration and identity construction. The play shows these two unreconciled strivings by discussing whether the piano should be sold. They attempt to maintain a sense of pride in their Africanness, while simultaneously being assimilated into a dominant white culture. Through analyzing the two main characters Berneice and Willie’s confusion and self-assertion based on the concept of double consciousness, it could be seen that the way to escape their identity dilemma is not achieved by the attitude of adjustment and submission, but by the acknowledgment of African Americans’ link to Africa and the fight for unalienable rights as American citizens.

Legal Personhood: An Analysis of the Legal Rights of Corporations and Their Relation to Animal Ethics

Abstract In the United States of America, and in much of the world, corporations are afforded a great deal of rights to both protect themselves and others against legal action and mistreatment. To gain these rights, they defended themselves or were defended many times throughout the years in courts under the framework of “legal personhood”—but this same legal personhood is not afforded to most actual living creatures. There is enough similarity in the legal framework afforded to corporations that should be afforded to animals as well, and more than enough evidence to show that it is increasingly necessary to protect and expand animal rights in this way. The argument is simple: because of their sentience, cognition, and emotional intelligence, animals deserve legal personhood. If we can make the argument that a corporation, which is incapable of these things listed above, should have certain unalienable rights, then it is illogical for us to make the argument that animals should not.

Unalienable Rights and Some Libertarians

The idea that all human beings are endowed with unalienable rights is a core element of America’s public philosophy going back to the Declaration of Independence. But it is increasingly clear that many Americans have abandoned the idea that some rights are unalienable- especially, I would argue, libertarians. Given the prevalence of libertarianism in our culture, an important question is whether all libertarians logically ought to reject unalienable rights given their philosophical anthropology. What I propose to do in this article is three things: First, I will introduce and give a definition for “unalienable rights” by reviewing the recent proceedings of the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. Second, I will show why the concept of unalienable rights is generally incompatible with the libertarian philosophical anthropology. Third, I will survey the writings of specific libertarian philosophers, economists, and law professors to consider whether they believe in unalienable rights. This will allow us to better understand the status of unalienable rights in America today.

Evangelical Internationalists and Human Rights

In 2019 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched the Commission on Unalienable Rights, a council charged with defining human rights for U.S. foreign policymakers grounded in the founding documents of the United States. Few were surprised with the resulting emphasis on religious freedom and property rights, as announced by Pompeo in a 2020 speech. In the past several years, scholars of religious studies, historians, and political scientists have scrutinized the emergence of “religious freedom” as a signature issue for white U.S. evangelicals in domestic as well as international politics. Lauren Frances Turek’s To Bring the Good News to All Nations offers an essential background through an analysis of the ideology and networks of conservative-leaning white evangelical internationalists in the late-Cold-War era of the 1970s and 1980s. Turek's evangelicals are white Protestants (she focuses primarily on Baptists, Presbyterians, and Pentecostals as well as a number of ecumenical organizations) who, in...

On the Status of Rights

On the Status of Rights

A Case Study in Federalism - the United States and Michigan Constitutions: Not Double Vision, Double Constitutions

ABSTRACT Each citizen in America lives under two Constitutions - the United States, federal Constitution which applies to all citizens, and the constitution of the state in which the citizen lives. Often overlooked and basically unknown, the state constitutions play a vital role in governance and preserving our unalienable rights. Perhaps the best way to understand each constitution is to compare and contrast them. Accordingly, as a case study, this article examines the age, length, predecessors, drafting process, conventions, ratification process, and amendment procedures of the State of Michigan Constitution of 1963 and the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, this article examines how each of these constitutions addresses the separation of powers, legislature, executive, judiciary, local government, transportation, education, finance, taxation, and the protection of unalienable rights. Armed with this understanding, we will be better informed citizens, and more ably equipped to participate in self-governance and protect the unalienable rights of the citizenry. Note: At times this article quotes constitutional text which refers to “he” or “him.” The grammatical convention at the time was to make masculine all generic gender references. That this article quotes the text does not equate to an endorsement of the convention nor did the drafters intend that only men could serve as public officials.

The Authoritative Sway of Artificial Boundaries of Sexual Orientation: An Ethical Imperative for Public Administration

Public administrators implement and direct the powers of government. Public administration ethics, combined with social equity, is positioned to direct these powers and to thereby advance the rights and inclusion of all humanity. This paper discusses how social categories create artificial boundaries and allow for authoritative removal of rights; it examines barriers to full rights and privileges for individuals who are LGBT. We ask: Do public administration ethics reflect the self-evident truths of the founding documents, including “all… are created equal” with “unalienable rights?” Unfortunately, “all” still does not apply to everyone. Today some groups remain marginalized. Centuries after the Constitution was ratified, in the wake of WWII, the international community affirmed our founding principles. Do we limit rights through categories we create? In society are we “man” or “woman” only as a result of categories determined by various religious approaches? Employing intersectionality and Critical Action Research, we draw from stories of students who are LGBT. We surface the damaging impacts of negative categorization, stigma, and hierarchy of credibility which contribute to their experience as “lesser” persons in society. We conclude with expanding social equity in a way to extend ethics in Public Administration to Humanity Beyond Boundaries.

Mental Wear and Tear of Black Genu Protests

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ViewpointsFull AccessMental Wear and Tear of Black Genu ProtestsFrank Clark, M.D.Frank ClarkSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:16 Nov 2020https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2020.11b28AbstractThe authors of the Declaration of Independence unequivocally expressed their desire for Americans to possess the following unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Since the inception of slavery, we have witnessed the dichotomy between White America and Black America. One America has been like a sloth in recognizing its privilege and fragility. The other America continues to utilize the resilient knee in pursuit of the rights that were never intended for them to treasure.I am a part of that America, whose community has been incessantly scolded for what many would consider unconventional forms of protests. We have been referred to as thugs and unpatriotic. These inflammatory remarks coupled with the innumerable modern-day lynchings of Black people contribute to the mental wear and tear of the Black knee that yearns for harmony and reconciliation. It has led me to ask the following question: How is a Black person in America supposed to protest?I have asked this question of my White brothers and sisters during countless encounters. It usually evokes a sense of discomfort and avoidance. I leave these encounters feeling discouraged and exasperated due to a lack of acknowledgment that there is a tale of two Americas with two sets of rules and outcomes. I cringe at the thought of continuing down this road of unequal treatment for our communities who desire peace and justice. The harsh reality for Black America is that to protest means that we are ungrateful to the modern-day slave masters that supposedly feed and clothe us. Our knees remain shackled by the system that is repulsed by our Black skin. We are “encouraged” to stay in our lane or, better yet, “Shut up and dribble.”Our mental health continues to be compromised due to the inability to protest peacefully without people who have not walked in our shoes spewing insensitive commentary that leaves our knees hollow and lifeless. We are expected to have a glowing countenance in our workplaces despite the racial unrest that is unremitting. Perhaps the more appropriate questions directed toward my White counterparts should be the following: When will your communities view us as humans that desire the same privilege and rights you enjoy? When will you help relieve the pressure from our knees that are becoming arthritic from daily protests due to structural racism? When will you view us as more than Black bodies that provide entertainment?The mental wear and tear of the Black knee has an opportunity for rehabilitation and recovery. However, it rests on the shoulders of an America that is in need of introspection, reform, and humility. The America I seek is one where there is no division. The America I seek is one that sincerely embraces the diversity of its citizens to protest using various joints and appendages to bring about change. The America I seek is one where knees will coalesce in the fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ■Frank Clark, M.D., is medical director and division chief for adult inpatient and consultation-liaison services at Prisma Health-Upstate and a clinical assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine-Greenville. He is also a member of the APA Presidential Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry and an APA delegate to the AMA’s Section Council on Psychiatry. ISSUES NewArchived

American Muslim Character Cancellation: Framing Engagement through the Sphere of Deviance

While freedom of religion is constitutionally safeguarded in the United States, practice and expression thereof are modulated by apparatuses exhorting both ethnic and faith communities to flatten into expedient caricatures. The ‘moderate Muslim’ caricature is contingently acknowledged as a victim of animus thereby expected to unquestioningly advance state objectives. American Muslim scholars consequentially maintain a vigilant wariness of state engagement, sentiments further intensified when Donald Trump came to power. With the Trump regime’s perilous track record, Muslims willing to engage the federal government during the initial term were expectedly criticized. Situating the American Muslim communal consultation process (<em>al-shūrā</em>), this article analyzes 100 opinion editorials responding to the Department of State’s formation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights in 2019, and its inclusion of a recognizable Muslim scholar as commissioner. For disparate reasons, editorials authored by critical communal voices formulated a perceived consensus against any engagement with the regime whatsoever, suggesting self-censoring expressive parameters and balkanization. Using Daniel Hallin’s sphere of deviance, findings indicate that amidst increased expectations for religious leaders to be more accessible and accommodating, communal consultation on political issues broke down in the virtual spaces the scholar’s critics inhabited whilst his own public relations messaging operated with discernable ambivalence. Findings further suggest that as American Muslims increasingly identify with the social justice language of the far-left, communal thought leaders’ racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds disproportionately factor into how their words and engagements are interpreted and tolerated.

America First and the human rights regime

Donald Trump’s populist, nationalist “America First” agenda advocates a transactional, zero-sum, hypercompetitive, and sovereigntist view of US foreign policy, which many scholars and policymakers conclude poses a considerable challenge to multilateralism. We explore the threat America First presents to the international human rights regime as reflected in important institutions and norms. We survey America First policies regarding immigration and refugee norms as well as norms prohibiting torture and war crimes. We examine its position on the UN Human Rights Commission and the International Criminal Court, consider Trump’s sympathies for autocratic governments, and explore the development of the Commission on Unalienable Rights. Finally, we explain why the America First norm transgressions pose a novel threat to the human rights regime, potentially more worrisome than prior US norm violations. America First’s performative element risks reconstituting US identity as an outsider state, if not an outlaw, vis-à-vis the international community.

Trump and the Politics of International Religious Freedom

The article examines the USA’s international religious freedom policy during the presidency of Donald Trump. It argues that the Trump administration consistently prioritised America’s international religious freedom (IRF) policy according to Judeo-Christian values. This contrasted with previous administrations, which did not pursue such a clear Christocentric approach. The Trump administration has pursued the policy with vigour, drawing on Judeo-Christian ideology and prioritising religious freedom above other human rights, such as equality for women and sexual minorities. The article begins with a brief summary of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), signed into law by President Clinton in 1998. It then examines the influence of Judeo-Christian ideology on Trump’s international religious freedom policy. To do this, the article surveys three recent initiatives: the Commission on Unalienable Rights, the annual Ministerial to Advance International Religious Freedom, and the International Religious Freedom Alliance. I argue that collectively the initiatives promote the paramountcy of Judeo-Christian ideology. The article concludes that the Trump administration’s international religious freedom is strongly informed by a Judeo-Christian ideology which seeks to place religious freedom first in a hierarchy of human rights, while relegating others, especially equality for females and sexual minorities, to a lesser position.

The Status and Significance of Bayt al-Maqdis in Islam

In this commentary, the status and significance of Bayt al-Maqdis in Islam is discussed from a religious perspective. The importance of Bayt al-Maqdis is emphasized in the Qur’an and in the traditions (hadith) of Prophet Muhammad. The paper explains the significance of Bayt al-Maqdis by addressing the close bonds, unalienable rights, and firm ties that link Muslims to Bayt al-Maqdis and the land of Palestine. The author claims that there are four significant bonds through which Muslims link to Bayt al-Maqdis, namely bonds of creed, bonds of worship, bonds of civilization and culture, and historical bonds.