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Civil liberties in the United Kingdom have a long and formative history. This is usually considered to have begun with Magna Carta of 1215, a landmark document in British constitutional history. Development of civil liberties advanced in common law and in statute law in 17th and 18th centuries, notably with the Bill of Rights 1689. During the 19th century, working-class people struggled to win the right to vote and join trade unions. Parliament responded with new legislation, and attitudes to universal suffrage and liberties progressed further in the aftermath of the first and second world wars. Since then, the United Kingdom's relationship to civil liberties has been mediated through its membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. The United Kingdom, through Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, led the drafting of the Convention, which expresses a traditional civil libertarian theory.〔see e.g. the Praemble to the Convention, which states the Convention is there to secure "effective political democracy".〕 It became directly applicable in UK law with the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998. The relationship between human rights and civil liberties is often seen as two sides of the same coin. A right is something you may demand of someone, while a liberty is freedom from interference by another in your presumed rights. However, human rights are broader. In the numerous documents around the world, they involve more substantive moral assertions on what is necessary, for instance, for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", "to develop one's personality to the fullest potential" or "protect inviolable dignity". "Civil liberties" are certainly that, but they are distinctly ''civil'', and relate to participation in public life. As Professor Conor Gearty writes, Civil liberties is another name for the political freedoms that we must have available to us all if it to be true to say of us that we live in a society that adheres to the principle of representative, or democratic, government.〔Conor Gearty, ''Civil Liberties'' (2007) ''Clarendon Law Series'', Oxford University Press, p.1〕 In other words, civil liberties are the "rights" or "freedoms" which underpin democracy. This usually means the right to vote, the right to life, the prohibition on torture, security of the person, the right to personal liberty and due process of law, freedom of expression and freedom of association.〔Care should be taken with such definitions. Much more "underpins" democracy than civil and political rights. Capacity for public participation goes into the social and economic: see, e.g. Jeremy Waldron, 'Social Citizenship and the Defence of Welfare Provision' (1993) in ''Liberal Rights: Collected papers 1981-91'', Cambridge University Press, Ch.12; Also, the language of rights, liberties, freedoms, etc, etc, is inherently vague and the divisions between different rights in various documents are inevitably meaningless (e.g. is the right to liberty different from a fair trial, and does it matter?), and simply express country's cultural and historical preferences. At the core all these things come down to the mediation of relations between people, whether for power or resources or between individuals or the state. See, e.g. Alan Gewirth, ''Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications'' (1982); he puts forth the formula that any right can be put in the form of X claiming right Y against Z〕 ==Background== *Magna Carta (1215), supported what became the writ of habeas corpus, trial by one's peers, representation of nobility for taxation, and a ban on retroactive punishment. *''Dr. Bonham's Case'' (1610), Sir Edward Coke stated the judiciary could strike down Acts of Parliament, according to "common right and reason". This is effectively what the Americans followed in their Constitution with a case called ''Marbury v. Madison'' (1803). *Petition of Right (1628), established the illegality of taxation without parliamentary consent and prohibited arbitrary imprisonment.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/civilwar/overview/petition-of-right/ )〕 *Habeas Corpus Act 1679, safeguarded individual freedom against unlawful imprisonment with right to appeal. *Bill of Rights 1689, secured parliamentary supremacy over the monarch, the result of the Glorious Revolution. *John Locke, ''Second Treatise on Representative Government.'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Civil liberties in the United Kingdom」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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