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Civil Rights Vs Civil Liberties Essay

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The distinction between civil rights and civil liberties is that civil rights equate to protection from unequal treatment based on certain characteristics such as race, gender, and disability. Civil rights are guaranteed under the thirteenth and fourteenth amendment due to the fact that it enacted the right to social and economic equality regardless of race, gender, and disability, and it enacted the Equal Protection Clause. Civil liberties, on the other hand, are determined over the years by the courts or equate to basic rights and freedoms that are protected and are mentioned in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. Examples of basic rights include freedom of speech, the right to privacy, fair and speedy trial, the right to marry, and …show more content…

Ferguson (1896). Jim Crow laws, or infamously known as Black codes, aimed towards newly-freed slaves and restricted the African-American citizens from improving their status and even their voting rights. Because it sought against African-Americans, it became an unjust treatment based on race. Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine that “state segregation of the races involving railway carriages… provided segregated facilities are equal. A state law that segregates the races on railway carriages does not violate…the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement for equal protection of the law (Woll viii).” This case was also infringing civil rights based on race, which was overturned 58 years by Brown v. Board of Education.
An example of violating civil liberties would be the Brown v. Board of Education case. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), it stated that “the state laws…based on race violated the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Woll 132).” The act of violating basic rights or, in this case, the fourteenth amendment would be violating civil liberties. Furthermore, the act of enacting the “separate but equal” doctrine towards the African-Americans would be an example of unequal treatment based on race; therefore, it would also violate civil

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