Human rights in the United States
The human rights in the United States are from the US Federal Constitution , and especially its first ten additional articles (the Bill of Rights guaranteed).
history
The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 stated that
- “All men are created equal; that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights by their Creator; that life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness are part of it. "
- "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The 1787 Constitution came into effect in 1789 and the Bill of Rights dates from 1791. Slavery in the United States lasted until 1865 when it was abolished by the 13th Amendment .
The non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948 with the vote of the United States .
The United States did not sign the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights .
Eliminate Discrimination
In the judgment of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that “negroes” cannot be citizens of the United States. The women's suffrage ( 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ) is valid in the US since 1920. Because of the Federal Indian Policy , the natives received their civil rights until the year 1924. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 removed the legal racial discrimination of African Americans at the federal level, in the case of Loving v. Virginia (filmed in Loving (2016) ), the ban on multiracial marriages was lifted in 1967.
Also in 1967 the Butler Act was repealed in Tennessee , which made teaching evolutionary theory a criminal offense and after which the teacher John Thomas Scopes was first fined in the Scopes Trial in 1925 .
Since 1975 ( Taylor v. Louisiana judgment ) it is no longer up to women whether they serve as a jury , which means that the accused have been judged by a balanced jury ever since.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1987 in the Edwards v. Aguillard that a law in Louisiana that would allow the teaching of evolution in public schools only when teaching creationism was unconstitutional. In the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decided in 2005 that biology teachers in Dover, Pennsylvania could not be required to teach the creationist view of intelligent design .
In February 2014, the state of Arizona passed a law that allows companies not to serve homosexual customers for religious reasons. Republican governor Jan Brewer refused to sign the law.
Same-sex marriages have been permitted throughout the United States since 2015 ( Obergefell v. Hodges judgment ) .
Civil rights violations in World War II
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 still gives the president the right to arrest or deport nationals of states with which the US is at war with.
During the Second World War , around 75,000 American citizens were interned with the internment of Americans of Japanese origin based on Executive Order 9066 .
UN human rights treaty
Of the human rights treaties of the UN , the US has not yet signed the following agreements and ratified :
| agreement | date | signing | ratification |
|---|---|---|---|
| International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights | December 16, 1966 | 5th October 1977 | - |
| International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights | December 16, 1966 | 5th October 1977 | June 8, 1992 |
| International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination | March 7, 1966 | September 28, 1966 | October 21, 1994 |
| UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women | 18th December 1979 | 17th July 1980 | - |
| UN Convention against Torture | December 10, 1984 | April 18, 1988 | October 21, 1994 |
| Children's Rights Convention | November 20, 1989 | February 16, 1995 | - |
| International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families | 18th December 1990 | - | - |
| UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities | December 13, 2006 | July 30, 2009 | - |
| UN Convention against Enforced Disappearances | December 20, 2006 | - | - |
As of July 27, 2013
In June 2018 the United States left the UN Human Rights Council .
Developments after 9/11
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , human rights violations occurred in the war on terror . The most notorious cases are the Abu Ghuraib torture scandal , the extraordinary renditions of suspects to black sites with the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding , the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base or the targeted killing of terrorist suspects with drones .
The US Senate report on these practices was published in December 2014.
To protect military and government officials from criminal prosecution by the International Criminal Court , the American Service Members' Protection Act was enacted in 2002 .
In June 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden made public the systematic, comprehensive telecommunications surveillance by the National Security Agency and the associated impairment of telecommunications secrecy known to a global public .
death penalty
The death penalty , which has largely been abolished in industrialized countries and is banned by both the American and European human rights conventions , is imposed by civil and military courts in the United States.
Since 2002 ( Atkins v. Virginia case ) it can no longer be imposed on the mentally disabled, since 2005 ( Roper v. Simmons ) it can no longer be pronounced if the perpetrator was younger than 18 at the time of the crime.
literature
- Michael G. Ignatieff: American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. Princeton University Press, 2005.
- Micheline R. Ishay: The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era. University of California Press, 2008.
Web links
- Human Rights Watch: World Report 2013 (PDF; 4.8 MB)
- UN Human Rights Council: Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review 2015 (PDF)