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Human rights in the United States comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States, including the amendments,〔Brennan, William, J., ed. Schwartz, Bernard, The Burger Court: counter-revolution or confirmation?, Oxford University Press US, 1998, ISBN 0-19-512259-3, page 10〕 state constitutions, conferred by treaty, and enacted legislatively through Congress, state legislatures, and state referenda and citizen's initiatives. Federal courts in the United States have jurisdiction over international human rights laws as a federal question, arising under international law, which is part of the law of the United States. The human rights record of the United States of America is a complicated matter; first and foremost the Federal Government of the United States has, through a ratified constitution and amendments thereof, guaranteed unalienable rights to citizens of the country, and also to some degree, non-citizens. However, the historical evolution of these rights must be considered as well, as the periphery of the population of the United States who had access to these rights has expanded over time, and in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has not fully expanded complete rights to all human beings within its borders as compared to the international standard set by the United Nations General Assembly, because of social and political issues that stem from the history of the United States. Contrary to its constitutionally-protected requirement towards respecting of human rights, the United States has been internationally criticized for its violation of human rights, including the denial of access to basic healthcare, the least protections for workers of any Western country,〔 the imprisonment of debtors,〔http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/return-debtors-prison/〕 the disconnection of water to impoverished citizens who cannot afford it,〔(UN: Detroit violating human rights by turning off residents' taps ). ''The Guardian,'' June 25, 2014.〕 the deprivation of housing and the criminalization of homelessness,〔(U.N. Human Rights Committee Calls U.S. Criminalization of Homelessness "Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading" ). ''The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty,'' March 27, 2014. Retrieved May 12, 2014.〕 the invasion of the privacy of its citizens through surveillance programs,〔 institutional racism, gender discrimination, police brutality,〔Stephanie Nebehay (August 30, 2014). (UN Condemns U.S. Police Brutality, Calls For 'Stand Your Ground' Review ). ''The Huffington Post.'' Retrieved August 30, 2014.〕 the incarceration of citizens for profit, the mistreatment of prisoners and juveniles in the prison system,〔 crackdowns on peaceful protesters, the continued support for foreign dictators who commit abuses (including genocide) against their own people, unconstitutional denial of voting rights of certain races or political affiliations, and the illegal detainment and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.〔''(The Universal Declaration of Human Rights )'', supreme law of international human rights of the United Nations: ''Article 25: 1: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.''〕 Some observers give the U.S. high to fair marks on human rights〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Map of Freedom 2014 )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=World: Human Rights Risk Index 2014 )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=World press freedom index 2014 )〕 while others charge it with a persistent pattern of human rights violations.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=United States )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=The top 100 offenders )〕 ==History== The first human rights organization in the Thirteen Colonies of British America, dedicated to the abolition of slavery, was formed by Anthony Benezet in 1775. A year later, the Declaration of Independence announced that the Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, which has become a well-known statement on human rights, read "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 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."〔Declaration of Independence〕 This view of human liberties, which developed during the Enlightenment, postulates that fundamental rights are not granted by a divine or supernatural being to monarchs who then grant them to subjects, but are granted by a divine or supernatural being to each man (but not woman) and are inalienable and inherent. After the Revolutionary War, the former thirteen colonies went through a pre-government phase of more than a decade, with much debate about the form of government they would have. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787 through ratification at a national convention and conventions in the colonies, created a republic that guaranteed several rights and civil liberties; the Constitution significantly referred to "Persons", not "Men" as was used in the Declaration of Independence, omitted any reference to the supernatural imagination (such as a "Creator" or "God") and any authority derived or divined therefrom, and allowed "affirmation" in lieu of an "oath" if preferred.〔See, e.g., 〕 The Constitution thus eliminated any requirement of supernatural grant of human rights and provided that they belonged to all Persons (presumably meaning men and women, and perhaps children, although the developmental distinction between children and adults poses issues and has been the subject of subsequent amendments, as discussed below). Some of this conceptualization may have arisen from the significant Quaker segment of the population in the colonies, especially in the Delaware Valley, and their religious views that all human beings, regardless of sex, age, or race or other characteristics, had the same Inner light. Quaker and Quaker-derived views would have informed the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, including through the direct influence of some of the Framers of the Constitution, such as John Dickinson and Thomas Mifflin, who were either Quakers themselves or came from regions founded by or heavily populated with Quakers.〔See, e.g.,〕 Dickinson, Mifflin and other Framers who objected to slavery were outvoted on that question, however, and the original Constitution sanctioned slavery (although not based on race or other characteristic of the slave) and, through the Three-Fifths Compromise, counted slaves (who were not defined by race) as three-fifths of a Person for purposes of distribution of taxes and representation in the House of Representatives (although the slaves themselves were discriminated against in voting for such representatives). See Three-Fifths Compromise. As the new Constitution took effect in practice, concern over individual liberties and concentration of power at the federal level, gave rise to the amendment of the Constitution through adoption of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments of the Constitution). Courts and legislatures also began to vary in the interpretation of "Person," with some jurisdictions narrowing the meaning of "Person" to cover only people with property, only men, or only white men. For example, although women had been voting in some states, such as New Jersey, since the founding of the United States, and prior to that in the colonial era, other states denied them the vote. In 1756 Lydia Chapin Taft voted, casting a vote in the local town hall meeting in place of her deceased husband.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Blackstone Valley )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Blackstone Valley )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Women in Politics: A Timeline )〕 In 1777 women lost the right to exercise their vote in New York, in 1780 women lost the right to exercise their vote in Massachusetts, and in 1784 women lost the right to exercise their vote in New Hampshire. From 1775 until 1807, the state constitution in New Jersey permitted all persons worth over fifty pounds (about $7,800 adjusted for inflation, with the election laws referring to the voters as "he or she") to vote; provided they had this property, free black men and single women regardless of race therefore had the vote until 1807, but not married women, who could have no independent claim to ownership of fifty pounds (anything they owned or earned belonged to their husbands by the Common law of Coverture).〔(【引用サイトリンク】archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070620175501/http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/earlyrepublic/cohen.html )〕 In 1790, the law was revised to specifically include women, but in 1807 the law was again revised to exclude them, an unconstitutional act since the state constitution specifically made any such change dependent on the general suffrage. See Women's suffrage in the United States. Through the doctrine of coverture, many states also denied married women the right to own property in their own name, although most allowed single women (widowed, divorced or never married) the "Person" status of men, sometimes pursuant to the common law concept of a femme sole. Over the years, a variety of claimants sought to assert that discrimination against women in voting, in property ownership, in occupational license, and other matters was unconstitutional given the Constitution's use of the term "Person", but the all-male courts did not give this fair hearing. See, e.g., Bradwell v. Illinois. In the 1860s, after decades of conflict over southern states' continued practice of slavery, and northern states' outlawing it, the Civil War was fought, and in its aftermath the Constitution was amended to prohibit slavery and to prohibit states' denying rights granted in the Constitution. Among these amendments was the Fourteenth Amendment, which included an Equal Protection Clause which seemed to clarify that courts and states were prohibited in narrowing the meaning of "Persons". After the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted, Susan B. Anthony, buttressed by the equal protection language, voted. She was prosecuted for this, however, and ran into an all-male court ruling that women were not "Persons"; the court levied a fine but it was never collected. Fifty years later, in 1920, the Constitution was amended again, with the Nineteenth Amendment to definitively prohibit discrimination against women's suffrage. In the 1970s, the Burger Court made a series of rulings clarifying that discrimination against women in the status of being Persons violated the Constitution and acknowledged that previous court rulings to the contrary had been Sui generis and an abuse of power. The most often cited of these is Reed v. Reed, which held that any discrimination against either sex in the rights associated with Person status must meet a strict scrutiny standard. The 1970s also saw the adoption of the Twenty-seventh Amendment, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of age, for Persons 18 years old and over, in voting. Other attempts to address the developmental distinction between children and adults in Person status and rights have been addressed mostly by the Supreme Court, with the Court recognizing in 2012, in Miller v. Alabama a political and biological principle that children are different from adults. In the 20th century, the United States took a role in the creation of the United Nations and in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Drafting Committee was chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was known for her human rights advocacy. Even as such, the United States is in violation of the Declaration, in as much that "everyone has the right to leave any country" because the government may prevent the entry and exit of anyone from the United States for foreign policy, national security, or child support rearage reasons by revoking their passport.〔See Haig v. Agee, Passport Act of 1926, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996〕 The United States is also in violation of the United Nations' human rights Convention on the Rights of the Child which requires both parents to have a relationship with the child. Conflict between the human rights of the child and those of a mother or father who wishes to leave the country without paying child support or doing the personal work of child care for his child can be considered to be a question of negative and positive rights. 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「Human rights in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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