Citizenship (pp. 391-393 in textbook)
Citizens are members of a political society---A Nation. Citizens of the United States have certain rights, duties & responsibilities.
The U.S. government draws its power from the people. Duties of people include obeying the law, paying taxes, and being loyal to the American government and its basic principles.
Naturalization is the legal process by which a person is granted the rights and privileges of a citizen.
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American in Missouri. Scott had also lived in Illinois, a free state and the Wisconsin Territory (where slavery was forbidden).
Scott sued his slaveholder’s widow for his freedom, claiming his earlier residence in a free state made him free. A state court ruled in Scott’s favor, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that decision, prompting Scott’s lawyer to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Court ruled that Scott could not bring a federal suit because African Americans, free or enslaved, were not citizens at the time the Constitution was adopted.
Therefore they could not claim citizenship.
The 14th Amendment overruled the Dred Scott decision, guaranteeing that people of all races born in the United States and subject to its government are citizens.
It also set forth 2 of 3 basic sources of U.S. citizenship—birth on American soil (jus soli) (of the soil)
and naturalization.
The 3rd source is being born to a person who is a U.S. citizen. (jussanguinis) ( of the blood)
Chapter 14 Citizenship and Equal Justice
Civil Rights
Civil Rights - Rights of the individual citizen. They are specified (the Bill of Rights of
the US constitution) and guaranteed by law to ensure equal treatment for all citizens.
Civil rights are rights that are bestowed by governmentson those within their territorial
boundaries, while natural or human rights are rights that many scholars claim that individuals have by nature of birth.
Civil Liberties
Civil Libertiesare rights in Freedom that protect an individual from the government of the nation in which they reside.
Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power
and interfere unduly with the lives of private citizens.
Examples of civil rights and liberties include the right to get restitutionif injured by another, the right to privacy, the right of peaceful protest, the right to a fair investigation and trial if suspected of a crime, and more generally-based constitutional rights such as the right to vote, the right to personal freedom, the right to freedom of movement and the right of equal protection.
As civilizations emerged and formalized through written constitutions, some of the more important civil rights were granted to common citizens.
Common civil liberties include the rights of people, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and additionally, the right to protest, to a trial, to own property, and to privacy.
The formal concept of civil liberties dates back to the English legal charter the
Magna Carta1215