Why Are Civil Liberties Important

Civil liberties were written into the constitution as the Bill of Rights. These were the freedoms that Americans felt extremely strong that they were fundamental from the government and they may not take them away from the people. The civil liberties are written into the constitution as the first ten amendments. Liberties protect citizens from improper governmental action. An ex-ample is the 4th amendment, which is the right of the people to be secure in their houses and that papers against unreasonable searches and seizures are not to be violated. This amendment allows people to know that their houses are a secure place and that the government cannot come in at any time randomly to search. Civil rights are rights that are related to the duties of citizenship and for the participation op-portunities in civic life that the government is committed to protect. These rights are based upon the expectation of equality under the laws. A really concrete example of a civil right is the right to vote, because voting is a duty of citizenship and they should be participation.

For civil rights around 1954 a case came to the Supreme Court named Brown V. Board of Education. The overall concept of this case is that segregated schools were inherently unequal. This case brought up the issue that segregation in schools violated the fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment requires that states give equal protection of laws. Over-all Brown V. Board of Education strikes down the separate but equal standard. To follow a cou-ple different events took place to insure the equal standard got fixed. Events like Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock to force integration of Central High School. And then that lead on to fix segregation of public transportation. In 1965 a major act happened called, Voting Rights Act of