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• Foundation for Economic Education - Individual Liberty and the Rule of Law
• Nature - Individual liberty and the importance of the concept of the people
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Positive and Negative Liberty

liberty , a state of freedom, especially as opposed to political subjection, imprisonment , or slavery . Its two most generally recognized divisions are political and civil liberty .

Civil liberty is the absence of arbitrary restraint and the assurance of a body of rights, such as those found in bills of rights, in statutes, and in judicial decisions. Such liberty, however, is not inconsistent with regulations and restrictions imposed by law for the common good . Political liberty consists of the right of individuals to participate in government by voting and by holding public office. Since the proletarian and socialist movements and the economic dislocations after World War I , liberty has been increasingly defined in terms of economic opportunity and security. In Anglo-American countries liberty has often been identified with constitutional government , political democracy , and the orderly administration of common-law systems.

In a more particular sense, a liberty is the term for a franchise , a privilege, or branch of the crown’s prerogative granted to a subject, as, for example, that of executing legal process. These liberties are exempt from the jurisdiction of the sheriff and have separate commissions of the peace. In the United States a franchise is a privilege, the term liberty not being used in such cases. The concept of liberty as a body of specific rights found in English and U.S. constitutional law contrasts with the abstract or general liberty enunciated during the French Revolution and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen . However, modern liberty involves, in theory, both the support of specific rights of the individual, such as civil and political liberty, and the guarantee of the general welfare through democratically enacted social legislation.

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Definition of liberty

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freedom , liberty , license mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion.

freedom has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated.

liberty suggests release from former restraint or compulsion.

license implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom.

Examples of liberty in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'liberty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French liberté , from Latin libertat-, libertas , from liber free — more at liberal

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing liberty

• civil liberty
• liberty cap
• liberty pole
• take the liberty of

Dictionary Entries Near liberty

libertinism

Cite this Entry

“Liberty.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberty. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of liberty, legal definition, legal definition of liberty, geographical definition, geographical name, definition of liberty, more from merriam-webster on liberty.

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What does liberty mean.

Table of Contents

Liberty: A Dual Perspective

Negative liberty: freedom from imposition.

The concept of negative liberty is that one can live freely without imposition or oppression by an authority.

Political Implication

It is a political view that to be free and enjoy liberty, one must live in a society where the government does not control or otherwise interfere with their individual lives.

At the other end of the spectrum, positive liberty can be understood as an individual’s ability to overcome adversities.

Under this concept of liberty, an individual possesses the necessary powers and resources to overcome any environment that seeks to interfere or otherwise suppress one’s individual right to achieve their goals in life.

John Stuart Mill On Liberty

In 1859, an English philosopher named John Stuart Mill wrote an essay entitled “On Liberty.” He believed that there was a direct relationship between the existence of both authority and liberty.

He believed in individuality, which he considers being a prerequisite to achieving happiness.

He explained that the masses subjugated to that tyranny would develop democratic ideals due to tyrannical rule.

He outlined that an individual has three fundamental, unalienable rights in life.

These rights were the following:

• right to life
• right to liberty
• right to pursue his or her dreams.

Although both liberals and libertarians have sought to criticize the essay, his work has nevertheless been fundamental in shaping political thought.

Printed nearly a century after the American Revolution, his philosophy provides a more in-depth definition of the words forever engraved in the Declaration of Independence.

Liberty As A Social Contract

Liberty is an idea that dates back more than 400 years before Christ. It was Plato who first sought to classify various rights of an individual.

In his work, “The Republic,” Plato states that liberty is a social contract. It is a natural right endowed upon each living human being and exists between each individual rather than only to those with power and money.

Freethinkers of his time believed that the law was responsible for governing the heavens and human affairs. It was the law that ultimately gave power to the king rather than the king giving power to the law.

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This idea of law would eventually find its way into the works of Montesquieu, for whom Thomas Jefferson was a follower. The ideas of Plato and Montesquieu helped him when drafting the initial Declaration of Independence.

Likewise, in his essay, John Stuart Mill would further define the relationship between liberty and law.

He explained that there was a continuous battle between authority and liberty in life, which results in the desire for one’s independence.

The Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson was responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence in 1775. It was a time in the colonies when British rule over the colonialists had become so oppressive that there was an overwhelming desire to declare independence from the Crown .

Accordingly, Jefferson declared in the Declaration that everyone living in the United States should have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

While the colonialists wanted to be free from the tyrannical rule of a king on the other side of the ocean, some also wanted to maintain the right to be oppressors themselves.

Even after the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, slave owners in the South believed their right to liberty was more important than the slaves’ right to liberty.

While the Declaration of Independence guaranteed liberty to the colonialists, it would take more than 100 years to extend that guarantee to minorities.

Thomas Jefferson

Even before becoming the president of the United States in 1801, Thomas Jefferson was a diplomat, statesman, lawyer, and one of the 56 Founding Fathers of the nation.

As a delegate for the Virginia colony in the Second Continental Congress , he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1775.

He would later serve as both the Secretary of State and the Vice President of the United States under George Washington and John Adams before becoming the third United States President.

He was a proud proponent of democracy and one’s rights and was known for his ability to motivate the colonialists to form a sovereign nation.

As governor of Virginia, he was also responsible for passing several laws that enforced the ideas of freedom, liberty, and one’s right to determine their fate in life.

Since its founding, the United States has been a two-party system for the most part.

Ideological Divide: Liberalism and Conservatism

This system consisted of those who believed in more liberal ideas and those who believed in more conservative ones.

The Tenets of Liberalism

The concept of liberalism itself is that it is the responsibility of politics to ensure that every individual can have the freedom of choice.

Components of Freedom in Liberal Discourse

Accordingly, in discussing freedom, three necessary components must be considered.

1. Determining the Scope of Freedom

The first component involves defining the scope of individuals who are considered to possess freedom.

2. The Realm of Permissible Actions

The second aspect entails examining the actions and behaviors that individuals are permitted to undertake freely.

3. Identifying and Overcoming Obstacles

Lastly, the third component encompasses recognizing and addressing any barriers that hinder unrestricted access to this freedom.

This liberal thinking allows individuals to be free to do as they please, provided that they do not obstruct the other’s right in return.

Republican Liberty

Conservative perspective on liberty.

On the other side of the coin is the conservative view on liberty.

Defining Liberty

According to historians and philosophers, liberty is not the lack of an obstacle to prevent one’s individual right to freedom, but rather that any obstacles should be viewed as non-domineering.

Individual’s Right to Freedom

In simpler terms, it is the idea that an individual’s right to freedom exists because they are not subject to another person’s will.

Social Contract in Liberalism

In liberalism, there is a social contract between two individuals that neither individual will interfere with each other’s right to do as they please.

Republican Liberty vs. Social Contract

However, under the concept of Republican liberty, no social contract is needed because no individual has the power or authority to dominate another individual.

Alicia Reynolds

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Liberalism is more than one thing. On any close examination, it seems to fracture into a range of related but sometimes competing visions. In this entry we focus on debates within the liberal tradition. (1) We contrast three interpretations of liberalism’s core commitment to liberty. (2) We contrast ‘old’ and ‘new’ liberalism. (3) We ask whether liberalism is a ‘comprehensive’ or a ‘political’ doctrine. (4) We close with questions about the ‘reach’ of liberalism — does it apply to all humankind? Must all political communities be liberal? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying No? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying Yes?

1.1 The Presumption in Favor of Liberty

1.2 negative liberty, 1.3 positive liberty, 1.4 republican liberty, 2.1 classical liberalism, 2.2 the ‘new liberalism’, 2.3 liberal theories of social justice, 3.1 political liberalism, 3.2 liberal ethics, 3.3 liberal theories of value, 3.4 the metaphysics of liberalism, 4.1 is liberalism justified in all political communities, 4.2 is liberalism a cosmopolitan or a state-centered theory, 4.3 liberal interaction with non-liberal groups: international, 4.4 liberal interaction with non-liberal groups: domestic, 5. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the debate about liberty.

“By definition,” Maurice Cranston says, “a liberal is a man who believes in liberty” (1967: 459). In two ways, liberals accord liberty primacy as a political value.

(i) Liberals have typically maintained that humans are naturally in “a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or depending on the Will of any other Man” (Locke, 1960 [1689]: 287). Mill too argued that “the burden of proof is supposed to be with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction or prohibition…. The a priori assumption is in favour of freedom…” (1963, vol. 21: 262). Recent liberal thinkers such as as Joel Feinberg (1984: 9), Stanley Benn (1988: 87) and John Rawls (2001: 44, 112) agree. Liberalism is a philosophy that starts from a premise that political authority and law must be justified. If citizens are obliged to exercise self-restraint, and especially if they are obliged to defer to someone else’s authority, there must be a reason why. Restrictions on liberty must be justified.

(ii) That is to say, although no one classifies Hobbes as a liberal, there is reason to regard Hobbes as an instigator of liberal philosophy (see also Waldron 2001), for it was Hobbes who asked on what grounds citizens owe allegiance to the sovereign. Implicit in Hobbes’s question is a rejection of the presumption that citizens are the king’s property; on the contrary, kings are empowered by citizens who are themselves, initially, sovereign in the sense of having a meaningful right to say no. In the culture at large, this view of the relation between citizen and king had been taking shape for centuries. The Magna Carta was a series of agreements, beginning in 1215, arising out of disputes between the barons and King John. The Magna Carta eventually settled that the king is bound by the rule of law. In 1215, the Magna Carta was part of the beginning rather than the end of the argument, but by the mid-1300s, concepts of individual rights to trial by jury, due process, and equality before the law were more firmly established. The Magna Carta was coming to be seen as vesting sovereignty not only in nobles but in “the People” as such. By the mid-1400s, John Fortescue, England’s Chief Justice from 1442 to 1461, would write The Difference Between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy , a plea for limited monarchy that arguably represents the beginning of English political thought (Schmidtz and Brennan, 2010: chap. 2).

Hobbes generally is treated as one of the first and greatest social contract thinkers. Typically, Hobbes also is seen as an advocate of absolute sovereignty. On Hobbes’s theory, Leviathan’s authority is almost absolute along a particular dimension: namely, Leviathan is authorized to do whatever it takes to keep the peace. This special end justifies almost any means, including drastic limitations on liberty. Yet, note the limitations implicit in the end itself. Leviathan’s job is to keep the peace: not to do everything worth doing, but simply to secure the peace. Hobbes, the famed absolutist, in fact developed a model of government sharply limited in this most important way.

Paradigmatic liberals such as Locke also maintain that justified limitations on liberty are fairly modest. Only a limited government can be justified; indeed, the basic task of government is to protect the equal liberty of citizens. Thus John Rawls’s paradigmatically liberal first principle of justice: “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equal basic liberty compatible with a similar system for all” (Rawls, 1999b: 220).

Liberals disagree, however, about the concept of liberty, and as a result the liberal ideal of protecting individual liberty can lead to different conceptions of the task of government. Isaiah Berlin famously advocated a negative conception of liberty:

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind…it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings (Berlin, 1969: 122).

For Berlin and those who follow him, then, the heart of liberty is the absence of coercion by other agents; consequently, the liberal state’s commitment to protecting liberty is, essentially, the job of ensuring that citizens do not coerce each other without compelling justification. So understood, negative liberty is a matter of which options are left to our discretion, or more precisely, which options are foreclosed by the actions of others, and with what warrant, and this is so regardless of whether we exercise such options (Taylor, 1979).

Many liberals have been attracted to more ‘positive’ conceptions of liberty. Although Rousseau (1973 [1762]) seemed to advocate a positive conception of liberty, according to which one was free when one acted according to one’s true will (the general will), the positive conception was best developed by the British neo-Hegelians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet (2001 [1923]). Green acknowledged that “…it must be of course admitted that every usage of the term [i.e., ‘freedom’] to express anything but a social and political relation of one man to other involves a metaphor…It always implies…some exemption from compulsion by another…”(1986 [1895]: 229). Nevertheless, Green went on to claim that a person can be unfree in another way, a psychological rather than political way, if he is subject to an impulse or craving that cannot be controlled. Such a person, Green argued, is “…in the condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the will of another, not his own” (1986 [1895]: 228). Just as a slave is not doing what he really wants to do, one who is, say, an alcoholic, is being led by a craving to look for satisfaction where it cannot, ultimately, be found.

For Green, a person is free only if she is self-directed or autonomous. Running throughout liberal political theory is an ideal of a free person as one whose actions are in some sense her own . In this sense, positive liberty is an exercise-concept . One is free merely to the degree that one has effectively determined oneself and the shape of one’s life (Taylor, 1979). Such a person is not subject to compulsions, critically reflects on her ideals and so does not unreflectively follow custom, and does not ignore her long-term interests for short-term pleasures. This ideal of freedom as autonomy has its roots not only in Rousseau’s and Kant’s political theory, but also in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. And today it is a dominant strain in liberalism, as witnessed by the work of S.I. Benn (1988), Gerald Dworkin (1988), and Joseph Raz (1986); see also the essays in Christman and Anderson (2005).

Green’s autonomy-based conception of positive freedom is often run together with a notion of ‘positive’ freedom: freedom as effective power to act or to pursue one’s ends. In the words of the British socialist R. H. Tawney, freedom thus understood is ‘the ability to act’ (1931: 221; see also Gaus, 2000; ch. 5.) On this positive conception, a person not prohibited from being a member of a Country Club but too poor to afford membership is not free to be a member: she lacks an effective power to act. Positive freedom qua effective power to act closely ties freedom to material resources. (Education, for example, should be easily available so that all can develop their capacities.) It was this conception of positive liberty that Hayek had in mind when he insisted that although “freedom and wealth are both good things…they still remain different” (1960: 17–18). To Hayek, wealth implies capability in a way that freedom does not.

An older notion of liberty that has recently resurfaced is the republican, or neo-Roman, conception of liberty, which has roots in the writings of Cicero and Niccolo Machiavelli (1950 [1513]). According to Philip Pettit,

The contrary of the liber , or free, person in Roman, republican usage was the servus , or slave, and up to at least the beginning of the last century, the dominant connotation of freedom, emphasized in the long republican tradition, was not having to live in servitude to another: not being subject to the arbitrary power of another (Pettit, 1996: 576).

On this view, the opposite of freedom is domination. To be unfree is to be “subject to the potentially capricious will or the potentially idiosyncratic judgement of another” (Pettit, 1997: 5). The ideal liberty-protecting government, then, ensures that no agent, including the government, has arbitrary power over any citizen. This is accomplished through an equal disbursement of power. Each person has power that offsets the power of another to arbitrarily interfere with her activities (Pettit, 1997: 67).

The republican conception of liberty is distinct from both Greenian positive and negative conceptions. Unlike Greenian positive liberty, republican liberty is not primarily concerned with rational autonomy, realizing one’s true nature, or becoming one’s higher self. When all dominating power has been dispersed, republican theorists are generally silent about these goals (Larmore 2001). Unlike negative liberty, republican liberty is primarily focused upon “defenseless susceptibility to interference, rather than actual interference” (Pettit, 1996: 577). Thus, in contrast to the ordinary negative conception, on the republican conception the mere possibility of arbitrary interference is a limitation of liberty. Republican liberty thus seems to involve a modal claim about the possibility of interference, and this is often cashed out in terms of complex counterfactual claims. It is not clear whether these claims can be adequately explicated (Gaus, 2003; cf. Larmore, 2004).

Some republican theorists, such as Quentin Skinner (1998: 113), Maurizio Viroli (2002: 6) and Pettit (1997: 8–11), view republicanism as an alternative to liberalism. When republican liberty is seen as a basis for criticizing market liberty and market society, this is plausible (Gaus, 2003b). However, when liberalism is understood more expansively, and not so closely tied to either negative liberty or market society, republicanism becomes indistinguishable from liberalism (Ghosh, 2008; Rogers, 2008; Larmore, 2001; Dagger, 1997).

2. The Debate Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’

Liberal political theory, then, fractures over how to conceive of liberty. In practice, another crucial fault line concerns the moral status of private property and the market order. For classical liberals — ‘old’ liberals — liberty and private property are intimately related. From the eighteenth century to the present day, classical liberals have insisted that an economic system based on private property is uniquely consistent with individual liberty, allowing each to live her life —including employing her labor and her capital — as she sees fit. Indeed, classical liberals and libertarians have often asserted that in some way liberty and property are really the same thing; it has been argued, for example, that all rights, including liberty rights, are forms of property; others have maintained that property is itself a form of freedom (Gaus, 1994; Steiner, 1994). A market order based on private property is thus seen as an embodiment of freedom (Robbins, 1961: 104). Unless people are free to make contracts and sell their labour, save and invest their incomes as they see fit, and free to launch enterprises as they raise the capital, they are not really free.

Classical liberals employ a second argument connecting liberty and private property. Rather than insisting that the freedom to obtain and employ private property is simply one aspect of people’s liberty, this second argument insists that private property effectively protects liberty, and no protection can be effective without private property. Here the idea is that the dispersion of power that results from a free market economy based on private property protects the liberty of subjects against encroachments by the state. As F.A. Hayek argues, “There can be no freedom of press if the instruments of printing are under government control, no freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedom of movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly” (1978: 149).

Although classical liberals agree on the fundamental importance of private property to a free society, the classical liberal tradition itself is a spectrum of views, from near-anarchist to those that attribute a significant role to the state in economic and social policy (on this spectrum, see Mack and Gaus, 2004). At the libertarian end of the classical liberal spectrum are views of justified states as legitimate monopolies that may with justice charge for essential rights-protection services: taxation is legitimate if necessary and sufficient for effective protection of liberty and property. Further ‘leftward’ we encounter classical liberal views that allow taxation for public education in particular, and more generally for public goods and social infrastructure. Moving yet further ‘left’, some classical liberal views allow for a modest social minimum.(e.g., Hayek, 1976: 87). Most nineteenth century classical liberal economists endorsed a variety of state policies, encompassing not only the criminal law and enforcement of contracts, but the licensing of professionals, health, safety and fire regulations, banking regulations, commercial infrastructure (roads, harbors and canals) and often encouraged unionization (Gaus, 1983b). Although classical liberalism today often is associated with libertarianism, the broader classical liberal tradition was centrally concerned with bettering the lot of the working class, women, blacks, immigrants, and so on. The aim, as Bentham put it, was to make the poor richer, not the rich poorer (Bentham, 1952 [1795]: vol. 1, 226n). Consequently, classical liberals treat the leveling of wealth and income as outside the purview of legitimate aims of government coercion.

What has come to be known as ‘new’, ‘revisionist’, ‘welfare state’, or perhaps best, ‘social justice’, liberalism challenges this intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property based market order (Freeden, 1978; Gaus, 1983b; Paul, Miller and Paul, 2007). Three factors help explain the rise of this revisionist theory. First, the new liberalism was clearly taking its own distinctive shape by the early twentieth century, as the ability of a free market to sustain what Lord Beveridge (1944: 96) called a ‘prosperous equilibrium’ was being questioned. Believing that a private property based market tended to be unstable, or could, as Keynes argued (1973 [1936]), get stuck in an equilibrium with high unemployment, new liberals came to doubt, initially on empirical grounds, that classical liberalism was an adequate foundation for a stable, free society. Here the second factor comes into play: just as the new liberals were losing faith in the market, their faith in government as a means of supervising economic life was increasing. This was partly due to the experiences of the First World War, in which government attempts at economic planning seemed to succeed (Dewey, 1929: 551–60); more importantly, this reevaluation of the state was spurred by the democratization of western states, and the conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could truly be, in J.A. Hobson’s phrase ‘representatives of the community’ (1922: 49). As D.G. Ritchie proclaimed:

be it observed that arguments used against ‘government’ action, where the government is entirely or mainly in the hands of a ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal or grandmotherly authority — such arguments lose their force just in proportion as the government becomes more and more genuinely the government of the people by the people themselves. (1896: 64)

The third factor underlying the currency of the new liberalism was probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from being ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26), property rights foster an unjust inequality of power. They entrench a merely formal equality that in actual practice systematically fails to secure the kind of equal positive liberty that matters on the ground for the working class. This theme is central to what is now called ‘liberalism’ in American politics, combining a strong endorsement of civil and personal liberties with indifference or even hostility to private ownership. The seeds of this newer liberalism can be found in Mill’s On Liberty. Although Mill insisted that the ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on ‘equally solid’ grounds as did the ‘principle of individual liberty’ (1963, vol. 18: 293), he nevertheless insisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty were distinct. And in his Principles of Political Economy, Mill consistently emphasized that it is an open question whether personal liberty can flourish without private property (1963, vol. 2; 203–210), a view that Rawls was to reassert over a century later (2001: Part IV).

One consequence of Rawls’s great work, A Theory of Justice (1999 [first published in 1971]) is that the ‘new liberalism’ has become focused on developing a theory of social justice. Since the 1960s when Rawls began to publish the elements of his emerging theory, liberal political philosophers have analyzed, and disputed, his famous ‘difference principle’ according to which a just basic structure of society arranges social and economic inequalities such that they are to the greatest advantage of the least well off representative group (1999b:266). For Rawls, the default is not liberty but rather an equal distribution of (basically) income and wealth; only inequalities that best enhance the long-term prospects of the least advantaged are just. As Rawls sees it, the difference principle constitutes a public recognition of the principle of reciprocity: the basic structure is to be arranged such that no social group advances at the cost of another (2001: 122–24). Many followers of Rawls have focused less on the ideal of reciprocity than on the commitment to equality (Dworkin, 2000). Indeed, what was previously called ‘welfare state’ liberalism is now often described as liberal egalitarianism. However, see Jan Narveson’s essay on Hobbes’s seeming defense of the welfare state (in Courtland 2018) for historical reflections on the difference.

And in one way that is especially appropriate: in his later work Rawls insists that welfare-state capitalism does not constitute a just basic structure (2001: 137–38). If some version of capitalism is to be just it must be a ‘property owning democracy’ with a wide diffusion of ownership; a market socialist regime, in Rawls’s view, is more just than welfare-state capitalism (2001: 135-38). Not too surprisingly, classical liberals such as Hayek (1976) insist that the contemporary liberal fixation on ‘the mirage of social justice’ leads modern liberals to ignore the extent to which, as a matter of historical observation, freedom depends on a decentralized market based on private property, the overall results of which are unpredictable.

Thus, Robert Nozick (1974: 160ff) famously classifies Rawls’s difference principle as patterned but not historical: prescribing a distribution while putting no moral weight on who produced the goods being distributed. One stark difference that emerges from this is that Rawlsian liberalism’s theory of justice is a theory about how to distribute the pie while old liberalism’s theory of justice is a theory about how to treat bakers (Schmidtz, 2022).

The problem with patterned principles is that, in Nozick’s words, liberty upsets patterns. “No end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference with people’s lives” (1974: 163). To illustrate, Nozick asks you to imagine that society achieves a pattern of perfect justice by the lights of whatever principle you prefer. Then someone offers Wilt Chamberlain a dollar for the privilege of watching Wilt play basketball. Before we know it, thousands of people are paying Wilt a dollar each, every time Wilt puts on a show. Wilt gets rich. The distribution is no longer equal, and no one complains. Nozick’s question: If justice is a pattern, achievable at a given moment, what happens if you achieve perfection? Must you then prohibit everything—no further consuming, creating, trading, or even giving —so as not to upset the perfect pattern? Notice: Nozick neither argues nor presumes people can do whatever they want with their property. Nozick, recalling the focus on connecting property rights to liberty that animated liberalism in its classical form, notes that if there is anything at all people can do, even if the only thing they are free to do is give a coin to an entertainer, then even that tiniest of liberties will, over time, disturb the favored pattern. Nozick is right that if we focus on time slices, we focus on isolated moments, and take moments too seriously, when what matters is not the pattern of holdings at a moment but the pattern of how people treat each other over time. Even tiny liberties must upset the pattern of a static moment. By the same token, however, there is no reason why liberty must upset an ongoing pattern of fair treatment. A moral principle forbidding racial discrimination, for example, prescribes no particular end-state. Such a principle is what Nozick calls weakly patterned, sensitive to history as well as to pattern, and prescribing an ideal of how people should be treated without prescribing an end-state distribution. It affects the pattern without prescribing a pattern. And if a principle forbidding racial discrimination works its way into a society via cultural progress rather than legal intervention, it need not involve any interference whatsoever. So, although Nozick sometimes speaks as if his critique applies to all patterns, we should take seriously his concession that “weak” patterns are compatible with liberty. Some may promote liberty, depending on how they are introduced and maintained. See Schmidtz (2006: chap.6). For work by modern liberals that resonates with Nozick’s dissection of the dimensions of equality that plausibly can count as liberal, see also Anderson (1999), Young (1990), and Sen (1992).

Accordingly, even granting to Nozick that time-slice principles license immense, constant, intolerable interference with everyday life, there is some reason to doubt that Rawls intended to embrace any such view. In his first article, Rawls said, “we cannot determine the justness of a situation by examining it at a single moment” (1951: 191) Years later, Rawls added, “It is a mistake to focus attention on the varying relative positions of individuals and to require that every change, considered as a single transaction viewed in isolation, be in itself just. It is the arrangement of the basic structure which is to be judged, and judged from a general point of view” (1999b: 76). Thus, to Rawls, basic structure’s job is not to make every transaction work to the working class’s advantage, let alone to the advantage of each member of the class. Rawls was more realistic than that. Instead, it is the trend of a whole society over time that is supposed to benefit the working class as a class . To be sure, Rawls was a kind of egalitarian, but the pattern Rawls meant to endorse was a pattern of equal status, applying not so much to a distribution as to an ongoing relationship. This is not to say that Nozick’s critique had no point. Nozick showed what an alternative theory might look like, portraying Wilt Chamberlain as a separate person in a more robust sense (unencumbered by nebulous debts to society) than Rawls could countenance. To Nozick, Wilt’s advantages are not what Wilt finds on the table; Wilt’s advantages are what Wilt brings to the table. And respecting what Wilt brings to the table is the exact essence of respecting him as a separate person. In part due to Nozick, today’s egalitarians now acknowledge that any equality worthy of aspiration will focus less on justice as a property of a time-slice distribution and more on how people are treated: how they are rewarded for their contributions and enabled over time to make contributions worth rewarding. (Schmidtz, 2006).

3. The Debate About the Comprehensiveness of Liberalism

As his work evolved, Rawls (1996: 5ff) insisted that his liberalism was not a ‘comprehensive’ doctrine, that is, one which includes an overall theory of value, an ethical theory, an epistemology, or a controversial metaphysics of the person and society. Our modern societies, characterized by a ‘reasonable pluralism’, are already filled with such doctrines. The aim of political liberalism is not to add yet another sectarian doctrine, but to provide a political framework that is neutral between such controversial comprehensive doctrines (Larmore, 1996: 121ff). Rawls’s notion of a purely political conception of liberalism seems more austere than the traditional liberal political theories discussed above, being largely restricted to constitutional principles upholding basic civil liberties and the democratic process.

Gaus (2004) argues that the distinction between ‘political’ and ‘comprehensive’ liberalism misses a great deal. Liberal theories form a broad continuum, from those that constitute full-blown philosophical systems, to those that rely on a full theory of value and the good, to those that rely on a theory of the right (but not the good), all the way to those that seek to be purely political doctrines. Nevertheless, it is important to appreciate that, though we treat liberalism as primarily a political theory, it has been associated with broader theories of ethics, value, and society. Indeed, many believe that liberalism cannot rid itself of all controversial metaphysical (Hampton, 1989) or epistemological (Raz, 1990) commitments.

Following Wilhelm von Humboldt (1993 [1854]), in On Liberty Mill argues that one basis for endorsing freedom (Mill believes there are many), is the goodness of developing individuality and cultivating capacities:

Individuality is the same thing with development, and…it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings…what more can be said of any condition of human affairs, than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good, than that it prevents this? (Mill, 1963, vol. 18: 267)

This is not just a theory about politics: it is a substantive, perfectionist, moral theory about the good. On this view, the right thing to do is to promote development or perfection, but only a regime securing extensive liberty for each person can accomplish this (Wall, 1998). This moral ideal of human perfection and development dominated liberal thinking in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and much of the twentieth: not only Mill, but T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse, Bernard Bosanquet, John Dewey and even Rawls show allegiance to variants of this perfectionist ethic and the claim that it provides a foundation for endorsing a regime of liberal rights (Gaus, 1983a). And it is fundamental to the proponents of liberal autonomy discussed above, as well as ‘liberal virtue’ theorists such as William Galston (1980). That the good life is necessarily a freely chosen one in which a person develops his unique capacities as part of a plan of life is probably the dominant liberal ethic of the past century.

The main challenge to Millian perfectionism’s status as the distinctly liberal ethic comes from moral contractualism/contractarianism, which can be divided into what might very roughly be labeled ‘Kantian’ and ‘Hobbesian’ versions. According to Kantian contractualism, “society, being composed of a plurality of persons, each with his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arranged when it is governed by principles that do not themselves presuppose any particular conception of the good…” (Sandel, 1982: 1). On this view, respect for the personhood of others demands that we refrain from imposing our view of the good life on them. Only principles that can be justified to all respect the personhood of each. We thus witness the tendency of recent liberal theory (Reiman, 1990; Scanlon, 1998) to transform the social contract from an account of the state to an overall justification of morality, or at least a social morality. This is not to deny, however, that liberalism is, after all, essentially a view that there is such a thing as minding one’s own business, and that there is a sphere within which we have the right to say “It’s my life” while politely declining invitations to justify ourselves. Liberalism is the idea that there are limits to any need for public justification.

In contrast, distinctively Hobbesian contractarianism supposes only that individuals are self-interested and correctly perceive that each person’s ability to effectively pursue her interests is enhanced by a framework of norms that structure social life and divide the fruits of social cooperation (Gauthier, 1986; Hampton, 1986; Kavka, 1986). Morality, then, is a common framework that advances the self-interest of each. The claim of Hobbesian contractarianism to be a distinctly liberal conception of morality stems from the importance of individual freedom and property in such a common framework: only systems of norms that allow each person great freedom to pursue her interests as she sees fit could, it is argued, be the object of consensus among self-interested agents (Courtland, 2008; Gaus, 2012; Ridge, 1998; Gauthier, 1995). The continuing problem for Hobbesian contractarianism is the apparent rationality of free-riding: if everyone (or enough) complies with the terms of the contract, and so social order is achieved, it would seem rational to defect, and act immorally when one can gain by doing so. This is essentially the argument of Hobbes’s ‘Foole’, and from Hobbes (1948 [1651]: 94ff) to Gauthier (1986: 160ff), Hobbesians have tried to reply to it.

Turning from rightness to goodness, we can identify three main candidates for a liberal theory of value. We have already encountered the first: perfectionism. Insofar as perfectionism is a theory of right action, it can be understood as an account of morality. Obviously, however, it is an account of rightness that presupposes a theory of value or the good: the ultimate human value is developed personality or an autonomous life. Competing with this objectivist theory of value are two other liberal accounts: pluralism and subjectivism.

In his famous defence of negative liberty, Berlin insisted that values or ends are plural, and further, the pursuit of one end necessarily implies that other ends will not be achieved. In this sense ends collide. In economic terms, the pursuit of one end entails opportunity costs: foregone pursuits which cannot be impersonally shown to be less worthy. There is no interpersonally justifiable way to rank the ends, and no way to achieve them all. Each person must devote herself to some ends at the cost of ignoring others. For the pluralist, then, autonomy, perfection or development are not necessarily ranked higher than hedonistic pleasures, environmental preservation or economic equality. All compete for our allegiance, but because they are incommensurable, no choice can be interpersonally justified.

The pluralist is not a subjectivist: that values are many, competing and incommensurable does not imply that they are somehow dependent on subjective experiences. But the claim that what a person values rests on experiences that vary from person to person has long been a part of the liberal tradition. To Hobbes, what one values depends on what one desires (1948 [1651]: 48). Locke advances a ‘taste theory of value’:

The Mind has a different relish, as well as the Palate; and you will as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all Man with Riches or Glory, (which yet some Men place their Happiness in,) as you would satisfy all men’s Hunger with Cheese or Lobsters; which, though very agreeable and delicious fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous and offensive: And many People would with reason preferr [sic] the griping of an hungry Belly, to those Dishes, which are a Feast to others. Hence it was, I think, that the Philosophers of old did in vain enquire, whether the Summum bonum consisted in Riches, or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation: And they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be found in Apples, Plumbs or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects upon it. For…pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves, but their agreeableness to this or that particulare Palate, wherein there is great variety…(1975 [1706]: 269).

The perfectionist, the pluralist and the subjectivist concur on the crucial point: the nature of value is such that reasonable people pursue different ways of living. To the perfectionist, this is because each person has unique capacities, the development of which confers value on her life; to the pluralist, it is because values are many and conflicting, and no one life can include them all, or make the interpersonally correct choice among them; and to the subjectivist, it is because our ideas about what is valuable stem from our desires or tastes, and these differ from one individual to another. All three views, then, defend the basic liberal idea that people rationally follow different ways of living. But in themselves, such notions of the good are not full-fledged liberal ethics, for an additional argument is required linking liberal value with norms of equal liberty, and to the idea that other people command a certain respect and a certain deference simply by virtue of having values of their own. To be sure, Berlin seems to believe this is a very quick argument: the inherent plurality of ends points to the political preeminence of liberty (see, for example, Gray: 2006). Guaranteeing each a measure of negative liberty is, Berlin argues, the most humane ideal, as it recognizes that ‘human goals are many’, and no one can make a choice that is right for all people (1969: 171). It is here that subjectivists and pluralists alike sometimes rely on versions of moral contractualism. Those who insist that liberalism is ultimately nihilistic can be interpreted as arguing that this transition cannot be made successfully: liberals, on their view, are stuck with a subjectivistic or pluralistic theory of value, and no account of the right emerges from it.

Throughout the last century, liberalism has been beset by controversies between, on the one hand, those broadly identified as ‘individualists’ and, on the other, ‘collectivists’, ‘communitarians’ or ‘organicists’ (for skepticism about this, though, see Bird, 1999). These vague and sweeping designations have been applied to a wide array of disputes; we focus here on controversies concerning (i) the nature of society; (ii) the nature of the self.

Liberalism is, of course, usually associated with individualist analyses of society. ‘Human beings in society’, Mill claimed, ‘have no properties but those which are derived from, and which may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individual men’ (1963, Vol. 8: 879; see also Bentham: 1970 [1823]: chap. I, sec. 4). Herbert Spencer agreed: “the properties of the mass are dependent upon the attributes of its component parts” (1995 [1851]: 1). In the last years of the nineteenth century this individualist view was increasingly subject to attack, especially by those who were influenced by idealist philosophy. D. G. Ritche, criticizing Spencer’s individualist liberalism, denies that society is simply a ‘heap’ of individuals, insisting that it is more akin to an organism, with a complex internal life (1896: 13). Liberals such as L. T. Hobhouse and Dewey refused to adopt radically collectivist views such as those advocated by Bernard Bosanquet (2001), but they too rejected the radical individualism of Bentham, Mill and Spencer. Throughout most of the first half of the twentieth century such ‘organic’ analyses of society held sway in liberal theory, even in economics (see A.F Mummery and J. A. Hobson, 1956: 106; J.M. Keynes, 1972: 275).

During and after the Second World War the idea that liberalism was based on inherently individualist analysis of humans-in-society arose again. Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) presented a sustained critique of Hegelian and Marxist theory and its collectivist and historicist, and to Popper, inherently illiberal, understanding of society. The reemergence of economic analysis in liberal theory brought to the fore a thoroughgoing methodological individualism. Writing in the early 1960s, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock adamantly defended the ‘individualistic postulate’ against all forms of ‘organicism’: “This [organicist] approach or theory of the collectivity….is essentially opposed to the Western philosophical tradition in which the human individual is the primary philosophical entity” (1965: 11–12). Human beings, insisted Buchanan and Tullock, are the only real choosers and decision-makers, and their preferences determine both public and private actions. The renascent individualism of late-twentieth century liberalism was closely bound up with the induction of Hobbes as a member of the liberal pantheon. Hobbes’s relentlessly individualistic account of society, and the manner in which his analysis of the state of nature lent itself to game-theoretical modeling, yielded a highly individualist, formal analysis of the liberal state and liberal morality.

Of course, as is widely known, we have recently witnessed a renewed interest in collectivist analyses of liberal society —though the term ‘collectivist’ is abjured in favor of ‘communitarian’. Writing in 1985, Amy Gutmann observed that “we are witnessing a revival of communitarian criticisms of liberal political theory. Like the critics of the 1960s, those of the 1980s fault liberalism for being mistakenly and irreparably individualistic” (1985: 308). Starting with Michael Sandel’s (1982) famous criticism of Rawls, a number of critics charge that liberalism is necessarily premised on an abstract conception of individual selves as pure choosers, whose commitments, values and concerns are possessions of the self, but never constitute the self. Although the ‘liberal-communitarian’ debate ultimately involved wide-ranging moral, political and sociological disputes about the nature of communities, and the rights and responsibilities of their members, the heart of the debate was about the nature of liberal selves. For Sandel the flaw at the heart of Rawls’s liberalism is its implausibly abstract theory of the self, the pure autonomous chooser. Rawls, he charges, ultimately assumes that it makes sense to identify us with a pure capacity for choice, and that such pure choosers might reject any or all of their attachments and values and yet retain their identity.

From the mid-1980s onwards various liberals sought to show how liberalism may consistently advocate a theory of the self which finds room for cultural membership and other non-chosen attachments and commitments which at least partially constitute the self (Kymlicka, 1989). Much of liberal theory has became focused on the issue as to how we can be social creatures, members of cultures and raised in various traditions, while also being autonomous choosers who employ our liberty to construct lives of our own.

4. The Debate About The Reach of Liberalism

In On Liberty Mill argued that “Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion” (1963, vol. 18: 224). Thus “Despotism is a legitimate form of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement…” (1963, vol. 18: 224). This passage — infused with the spirit of nineteenth century imperialism (and perhaps, as some maintain, latent racism) — is often ignored by defenders of Mill as an embarrassment (Parekh, 1994; Parekh, 1995; Mehta, 1999; Pitts, 2005).This is not to say that such Millian passages are without thoughtful defenders. See, for example, Inder Marawah (2011). Nevertheless, it raises a question that still divides liberals: are liberal political principles justified for all political communities? In The Law of Peoples Rawls argues that they are not. According to Rawls there can be a ‘decent hierarchical society’ which is not based on the liberal conception of all persons as free and equal, but instead views persons as “responsible and cooperating members of their respective groups” but not inherently equal (1999a: 66). Given this, the full liberal conception of justice cannot be constructed out of shared ideas of this ‘people’, though basic human rights, implicit in the very idea of a social cooperative structure, apply to all peoples. David Miller (2002) develops a different defense of this anti-universalistic position, while those such as Thomas Pogge (2002: ch. 4) and Martha Nussbaum (2002) reject Rawls’s position, instead advocating versions of moral universalism: they claim that liberal moral principles apply to all states.

The debate about whether liberal principles apply to all political communities should not be confused with the debate as to whether liberalism is a state-centered theory, or whether, at least ideally, it is a cosmopolitan political theory for the community of all humankind. Immanuel Kant — a moral universalist if ever there was one — argued that all states should respect the dignity of their citizens as free and equal persons, yet denied that humanity forms one political community. Thus he rejected the ideal of a universal cosmopolitan liberal political community in favor of a world of states, all with internally just constitutions, and united in a confederation to assure peace (1970 [1795]).

On a classical liberal theory, the difference between a world of liberal communities and a world liberal community is not of fundamental importance. Since the aim of government in a community is to assure the basic liberty and property rights of its citizens, borders are not of great moral significance in classical liberalism (Lomasky, 2007). In contrast under the ‘new’ liberalism, which stresses redistributive programs to achieve social justice, it matters a great deal who is included within the political or moral community. If liberal principles require significant redistribution, then it is crucially important whether these principles apply only within particular communities, or whether their reach is global. Thus a fundamental debate between Rawls and many of his followers is whether the difference principle should only be applied within a liberal state such as the United States (where the least well off are the least well off Americans), or whether it should be applied globally (where the least well off are the least well off in the world) (Rawls, 1999a: 113ff; Beitz, 1973: 143ff; Pogge, 1989: Part Three).

Liberal political theory also fractures concerning the appropriate response to groups (cultural, religious, etc.) which endorse illiberal policies and values. These groups may deny education to some of their members, advocate female genital mutilation, restrict religious freedom, maintain an inequitable caste system, and so on. When, if ever, should a liberal group interfere with the internal governance of an illiberal group?

Suppose first that the illiberal group is another political community or state. Can liberals intervene in the affairs of non-liberal states? Mill provides a complicated answer in his 1859 essay ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’. Reiterating his claim from On Liberty that civilized and non-civilized countries are to be treated differently, he insists that “barbarians have no rights as a nation , except a right to such treatment as may, at the earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only moral laws for the relation between a civilized and a barbarous government, are the universal rules of morality between man and man” (1963, vol. 21: 119). Although this strikes us today as simply a case for an objectionable paternalistic imperialism (and it certainly was such a case), Mill’s argument for the conclusion is more complex, including a claim that, since international morality depends on reciprocity, ‘barbarous’ governments that cannot be counted on to engage in reciprocal behavior have no rights qua governments. In any event, when Mill turns to interventions among ‘civilized’ peoples he develops an altogether more sophisticated account as to when one state can intervene in the affairs of another to protect liberal principles. Here Mill is generally against intervention. “The reason is, that there can seldom be anything approaching to assurance that intervention, even if successful, would be for the good of the people themselves. The only test possessing any real value, of a people’s having become fit for popular institutions, is that they, or a sufficient proportion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labour and danger for their liberation” (1963, vol. 21: 122).

In addition to questions of efficacy, to the extent that peoples or groups have rights to collective self-determination, intervention by a liberal group to induce a non-liberal community to adopt liberal principles will be morally objectionable. As with individuals, liberals may think that peoples or groups have freedom to make mistakes in managing their collective affairs. If people’s self-conceptions are based on their participation in such groups, even those whose liberties are denied may object to, and perhaps in some way be harmed by, the imposition of liberal principles (Margalit and Raz, 1990; Tamir, 1993). Thus rather than proposing a doctrine of intervention, many liberals propose various principles of toleration which specify to what extent liberals must tolerate non-liberal peoples and cultures. As is usual, Rawls’s discussion is subtle and enlightening. In his account of the foreign affairs of liberal peoples, Rawls argues that liberal peoples must distinguish ‘decent’ non-liberal societies from ‘outlaw’ and other states; the former have a claim on liberal peoples to tolerance while the latter do not (1999a: 59–61). Decent peoples, argues Rawls, ‘simply do not tolerate’ outlaw states which ignore human rights: such states may be subject to ‘forceful sanctions and even to intervention’ (1999a: 81). In contrast, Rawls insists that “liberal peoples must try to encourage [non-liberal] decent peoples and not frustrate their vitality by coercively insisting that all societies be liberal” (1999a: 62). Chandran Kukathas (2003) — whose liberalism derives from the classical tradition — is inclined to almost complete toleration of non-liberal peoples, with the non-trivial proviso that there must be exit rights.

The status of non-liberal groups within liberal societies has increasingly become a subject of debate, especially with respect to some citizens of faith. We should distinguish two questions: (i) to what extent should non-liberal cultural and religious communities be exempt from the requirements of the liberal state? and, (ii) to what extent can they be allowed to participate in decision-making in the liberal state?

Turning to (i), liberalism has a long history of seeking to accommodate religious groups that have deep objections to certain public policies, such as the Quakers, Mennonites or Sikhs. The most difficult issues in this regard arise in relation to children and education (see Galston, 2003; Fowler, 2010; Andersson, 2011) Mill, for example, writes:

Consider … the case of education. Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the father), after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards others and towards himself … . that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society … . (1963, vol. 18)

Over the last thirty years, there has been a particular case that is at the core of this debate — Wisconsin vs. Yoder : [406 U.S. 205 (1972)]. In this case, the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of Amish parents to avoid compulsory schooling laws and remove their children from school at the age of 14 — thus, according to the Amish, avoiding secular influences that might undermine the traditional Amish way of life. Because cultural and religious communities raise and educate children, they cannot be seen as purely voluntary opt-outs from the liberal state: they exercise coercive power over children, and so basic liberal principles about protecting the innocent from unjustified coercion come into play. Some have maintained that liberal principles require that the state should intervene (against groups like the Amish) in order to [1] provide the children with an effective right of exit that would otherwise be denied via a lack of education (Okin, 2002), [2] to protect the children’s right to an autonomous and ‘open future’ (Feinberg, 1980) and/or [3] to insure that children will have the cognitive tools to prepare them for their future role as citizens (Galston, 1995: p. 529; Macedo, 1995: pp. 285–6). Other liberal theorists, on the other hand, have argued that the state should not intervene because it might undermine the inculcation of certain values that are necessary for the continued existence of certain comprehensive doctrines (Galston, 1995: p. 533; Stolzenberg, 1993: pp. 582–3). Moreover, some such as Harry Brighouse (1998) have argued that the inculcation of liberal values through compulsory education might undermine the legitimacy of liberal states because children would not (due to possible indoctrination) be free to consent to such institutions.

Question (ii) — the extent to which non-liberal beliefs and values may be employed in liberal political discussion— has become the subject of sustained debate in the years following Rawls’s Political Liberalism . According to Rawls’s liberalism — and what we might call ‘public reason liberalism’ more generally — because our societies are characterized by ‘reasonable pluralism’, coercion cannot be justified on the basis of comprehensive moral or religious systems of belief. But many friends of religion (e.g., Eberle, 2002; Perry, 1993) argue that this is objectionably ‘exclusionary’: conscientious believers are barred from voting on their deepest convictions. Again liberals diverge in their responses. Some such as Stephen Macedo take a pretty hard-nosed attitude: ‘if some people…feel “silenced” or “marginalized” by the fact that some of us believe that it is wrong to shape basic liberties on the basis of religious or metaphysical claims, I can only say “grow up!”’ (2000: 35). Rawls, in contrast, seeks to be more accommodating, allowing that arguments based on religious comprehensive doctrines may enter into liberal politics on issues of basic justice “provided that, in due course, we give properly public reasons to support the principles and policies that our comprehensive doctrine is said to support” (1999a: 144). Thus Rawls allows the legitimacy of religious-based arguments against slavery and in favor of the United States civil rights movement, because ultimately such arguments were supported by public reasons. Others (e.g., Greenawalt, 1995) hold that even this is too restrictive: it is difficult for liberals to justify a moral prohibition on a religious citizen from voicing her view in liberal political debate.

Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might wonder whether there is any point in talking of ‘liberalism’ at all. It is not, though, an unimportant or trivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the grounding political value. Radical democrats assert the overriding value of equality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingness trump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion to freedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social order itself. Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting these conceptions of political right.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Political Philosophy — Definition Of Liberty Is Freedom

Definition of Liberty is Freedom

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Director’s Note: What Does Liberty Mean in America Today?

“Give me liberty or give me death.” The entwined ideals of liberty and freedom have been central to the American identity since before the Revolution. But, these concepts never have been completely or equitably implemented in American life. Indigenous people, women, and enslaved Africans and their descendants never enjoyed the full liberty that our founders conceived. This was suggested and discussed at the third Civic Conversation at the Newport Historical Society, focused on the idea of American liberty.

The first topic discussed was around the difference between freedom and liberty, with the former being based on an individual lack of constraints, and the latter being a larger status, one based in embeddedness in a body politic and including the full benefits and responsibilities of citizenship. As once participant said, “when slavery was abolished, it gave us freedom, but we did not really have liberty.”

The group of 26 people, who came together virtually, continued to examine the conflict between individual rights and the responsibilities of participating in society.  Notions of freedom to do what you want, we established, regularly bump up against the freedom from harm that we are all supposed to enjoy. This led to a discussion of how the idea of liberty has become perhaps, in 2020 America, a notion only about individual rights. “It’s a free country” means “I can do what I want,” as opposed to any sense of shared responsibility and actual liberty. This conflict can be seen to, at a minimum, influence many of the societal issues and national debates we are facing. The right to own and carry guns versus the right to be free from gun violence, the right to congregate versus concerns about public health, and our attitudes about drinking and driving were cited as examples.

We looked at how America has wrestled with an individual’s rights to, particularly, engage in economic activity when it conflicts with the rights of others. I will add, as an aside, that this is also true about religious practice, though it did not come up here.  We regularly, many thought, privilege our own needs above all, and this does not foster respect for others, for systems, or for the environment in which we live. This intense and unbounded individualism makes us all feel special, and deserving, and this can have very negative effects, said one speaker. It was suggested that this sense of entitlement and disrespect for others is a particular feature of the current time, but others expressed the belief that this is a long-standing feature of American life.

More than one participant suggested that when a society is founded on hypocrisies and on a system of domination and conquest, it is really hard to unwind it.  Inequities between those who have the full rights and expectations of liberty and those who do not become core. In America, these inequities have led to entrenched prejudice, and loss of freedoms, for Black and Native people. Significant current civic unrest triggered by police violence against Black Americans has made it clear how much abridged liberty for one group degrades freedom for everyone.

One participant suggested that we tend to see the conflict between individual and collective rights as a zero-sum game, and we allow this vision to shape policy in America in ways that don’t make sense. “If we make a high-speed railway between Boston and Washington, it does not actually abridge your right to drive your car, but people behave as it if will.” This plays out in environmental and health care policy as well, we noted. The unregulated commerce that pollutes the planet is cast as an individual freedom, when it both abridges the rights of those who wish not to be poisoned, and also potentially prevents all of us from thriving. Similarly, some attitudes about our health care system suggest limiting the economic rights of some is more dangerous to our liberty than allowing others the “freedom” to die without care, when in fact this dichotomy is not fixed or defining.

In addition to these examples, we spent some considerable time looking at the many things that reduce liberty for all or some of us. Inequities in educational systems, societal tolerance of sexism and violence against women, and restrictions in our ability to have access to sources of real news were all cited as issues. The extreme capitalism that some in American want to practice came up more than once. Some of these are new issues, and some are ancient, but, it should be noted, all are changeable.

As a penultimate note, there is always one idea that arises at these meetings that sticks to me and won’t let go. Here, it had to do with the path forward towards change, and what role history, and knowing our history, plays in both the development of our problems, and in potential solutions. This was discussed off and on throughout the 90 minutes. When the history taught in school erases part of the population or incorporates falsehoods, it facilitates the perpetuation of negative patterns for everyone. It also deprives segments of our population of their own history, and the stories of transcendence and triumph that might inspire some to leadership. And, since our history itself is filled with ignominy, faithlessness, hypocrisy and wrong acts, it is an incomplete blueprint for the future, at best. As one participant said, referencing Mordecai Kaplan, “history gets a vote, but it cannot be allowed to have a veto.”  History is filled with examples, we concluded, of how we might get better, might create a more perfect union. But we need the full and comprehensive history, and looking backwards for inspiration will not be enough to help us move forward.

A final thought is that Zoom has revealed itself to be in many ways a perfect format for this kind of conversation. We can all see each other’s faces, we can have quiet sidebars in the chat room, and we can indicate our support of a speaker without interrupting them. While I look forward to getting together in person some time soon, I am also very enthusiastic about continuing this series online.

Please, if you were inspired by this, or angered by it, get on the invitation list for these conversations by emailing [email protected] .

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Liberty: definition, features, types and essential safeguards of liberty.

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Liberty: Definition, Features, Types and Essential Safeguards of Liberty!

Of all the rights which are considered fundamental for the development of the personality of the individual, the right to liberty or freedom happens to be most respected and valued. In fact without liberty, i.e. without the freedom to enjoy one’s rights, there can be no real right available to the people. Liberty, as such, is the most cherished and loved right of the people.

I. Liberty: Meaning :

The word “Liberty” stands derived from the Latin word ‘Liber” which means ‘free’. In this sense liberty means freedom from restraints and the freedom to act as one likes. However, in a civil society such a meaning of Liberty is taken to be negative and harmful.

It is only in a jungle that freedom from restraints is available to animals. In a civil society no person can be really permitted to act without restraints. Hence, Liberty is taken to mean the absence of not all restraints but only those restraints which are held to be irrational.

Liberty is usually defined in two ways: Negative Liberty & Positive Liberty :

(A) Negative Liberty:

In its negative sense, Liberty is taken to mean an absence of restraints. It means the freedom to act is any way. In this form liberty becomes a license. Such a meaning of liberty can never be accepted in a civil society. In contemporary times, Negative conception of liberty stands rejected.

(B) Positive Liberty:

In its positive sense, Liberty is taken to mean freedom under rational and logical i.e. restraints which are rational and have stood the test of time. It means liberty under the rational and necessary restraints imposed by law. These restraints are considered essential for ensuring the enjoyment of liberty by all the people. In a civil society only positive liberty can be available to the people.

Positive Liberty means two important things:

1. Liberty is not the absence of restraints; it is the substitution of irrational restraints by rational ones. Liberty means absence of only irrational and arbitrary restraints and not all restraints.

2. Liberty means equal and adequate opportunities for all to enjoy their rights.

II. Liberty: Definition :

(1) “Liberty is the freedom of individual to express, without external hindrances, his personality.” -G.D.H Cole

(2) “Freedom is not the absence of all restraints but rather the substitution of rational ones for the irrational.” -Mckechnie

(3) “Liberty is the existences of those conditions of social life without which no one can in general be at his best self.” “Liberty is the eager maintenance of that atmosphere in which men have the opportunities to be their best-selves.” -Laski

Liberty is the most essential condition for the enjoyment of rights. It is not the absence of restraints. It is the positive condition for the enjoyment of rights. It admits the presence of such rational restraints as satisfy the test of historical experience and reason.

III. Features/Nature of Liberty :

(i) Liberty does not mean the absence of all restraints

(ii) Liberty admits the presence of rational restraints and the absence of irrational restraints.

(iii) Liberty postulates the existence of such conditions as can enable the people to enjoy their rights and develop their personalities.

(iv) Liberty is not a license to do anything and everything. It means the freedom to do only those things which are considered worth-doing or worth-enjoying.

(v) Liberty is possible only in a civil society and not in a state of nature or a ‘state of jungle’. State of anarchy can never be a state, of Liberty.

(vi) Liberty is for all. Liberty means the presence of adequate opportunities for all as can enable them to use their rights.

(vii) In society law is an essential condition of liberty. Law maintains conditions which are essential for the enjoyment of Liberty by all the people of the state.

(viii) Liberty the most fundamental of all the rights. It is the condition and the most essential right of the people. Liberty enjoys priority next only to the right to life.

In contemporary times, the positive view of liberty stands fully and universally recognized as the real, accepted, and really productive view of Liberty.

IV. Types of Liberty :

(1) Natural Liberty:

Traditionally the concept of natural liberty has been very popular. Natural liberty is taken to mean the enjoyment of unrestrained natural freedom. It is justified on the ground that since man is born free, he is to enjoy freedom as he wills. All restraints negate his freedom.

The social contractual lists (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) championed the cause of natural liberty. Rousseau became famous for his words: “Man is born free, but is in chains everywhere.” It is popularly believed that man has inherited the right to liberty from nature. Natural reason is the basis of liberty.

However, the concept of natural liberty is now considered to be an imaginary one. There can be no real freedom in a state of nature or a ‘jungle society’. Unrestrained freedom can create anarchy. It is only in an orderly society characterised by essential restraints based on laws and rules that real liberty can be possible. Natural liberty can lead to a living based on the evil principle of ‘might is right’ or the ‘rule of muscle power.’

(2) Civil Liberty:

The liberty which each individual enjoys as a member of the society is called civil liberty. It is equally available to all the individuals. All enjoy equal freedom and rights in society. Civil liberty is not unrestrained liberty. It is enjoyed only under some restrictions (Laws and Rules) imposed by the state and society. Civil Liberty is the very opposite of Natural liberty. Whereas Natural Liberty denounces the presence of restraints of any kind, Civil Liberty accepts the presence of some rational restraints imposed by the State and Society.

Further, Civil Liberty has two features:

(i) State guarantees Civil Liberty:

Civil liberty means liberty under law. Law creates the conditions necessary for the enjoyment of liberty. However, it refrains from creating obstacles in the way of enjoyment of liberty by the people. It protects liberty from such obstacles and actions of other men and organisations as can limit the equal liberty of all. The Laws of State imposes such reasonable restraints as are deemed necessary for the enjoyment of liberty by the people.

(ii) Civil liberty also stands for the protection of Rights and Freedom from undue interferences:

Civil liberty involves the concept of limiting the possibilities for violation of the rights of the people by the government. This is ensured by granting and guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the people. It also stands for providing constitutional and judicial protection to rights and liberty of the people.

(3) Political Liberty:

Good and adequate opportunities for using political rights by the people are defined as political liberty. When the people have the freedom of participation in the political process, it is held that they enjoy political liberty.

Political of liberty involves the freedom to exercise the right to vote, right to contest elections, right to hold public office, right to criticise and oppose the policies of the government, right to form political parties, interest groups and pressure groups, and the right to change the government through constitutional means.

Laski observes “Political liberty means the power to be active in the affairs of the state.” Such a liberty is possible only in a democracy. The real exercise of political rights by the people is a sure sign of the presence of political liberty and democracy.

(4) Individual Liberty/ Personal Liberty:

Individual liberty means the freedom to pursue one’s desires and interests as a person, but which do not clash with the interests or desires of others. The freedom of speech and expression, freedom of residence, freedom of movement, freedom of conscience, freedom of tastes and pursuits, freedom to choose any profession or trade or occupation, the freedom to enjoy the fruits of one’s labour, the right to personal property, the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion, and freedom to accept or not to accept any ideology, all fall under the category of individual freedom. However, all these freedoms are to be exercised in a way as does not hinder the equal freedom of others as well as does not violate public order, health and morality.

(5) Economic Liberty:

Laski defines economic liberty as freedom from the wants of tomorrow and availability of adequate opportunities for earning the livelihood. It stands for freedom from poverty, unemployment and the ability to enjoy at least three basic minimum needs — food, clothing and shelter. Laski writes, “Economic Liberty means security and opportunity to find reasonable significance in the earning of one’s daily bread”.

Economic Liberty can be enjoyed only when there is freedom from hunger, starvation, destitution and unemployment. Positively, it means the availability of the right to work and adequate opportunities for earning ones livelihood. Without fair economic liberty, political liberty becomes meaningless. When the people are not free from the fear of hunger, starvation and destitution they can never think of enjoying their rights and freedoms.

The grant of economic liberty to the people demands the grant of right to work, right to reasonable wages, adequate opportunities for livelihood, right to rest and leisure, and right to economic security in the old age.

(6) National Liberty:

National liberty is another name for independence of the nation.

It means complete freedom of the people of each state:

(i) To have a constitution of their own,

(ii) To freely organise their own government,

(iii) To freely adopt their policies and programmes,

(iv) To pursue independence in relations with all countries of the world, and

(v) Freedom from external control.

(7) Religious Liberty:

It means the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion. It means the freedom of faith and worship and non-intervention of State in religious affairs of the people. It also means equal status of all religions to freely carry out their activities in society. Secularism demands such a religious freedom.

(8) Moral Liberty:

It means the freedom to act according to one’s conscience. It stands for the liberty to work for securing moral self-perfection. Freedom to pursue moral values is moral freedom.

Thus, when one demands the right to liberty one really demands liberty in all these forms.

V. Some Essential Safeguards of Liberty :

1. Love for Liberty:

Only when people are strongly in love with their liberty, that liberty can be really safeguarded. Liberty needs continuous attempts on the part of the people to defend their liberty.

2. Eternal Vigilance:

The commitment of the people to defend their liberty and their full alertness against any encroachment of their liberty is the second most important safeguard of liberty. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

3. Grant of Equal Rights to All:

For safeguarding Liberty, it is essential that there should be no class of privileged persons in society. Liberty can exist only when equal rights are granted and guaranteed to all the people without any discrimination.

Grant of special privileges and rights to any class is always against the spirit of liberty. However, grant of some special privileges to the deprived sections of society (Protective Discrimination) is deemed just and essential.

4. Democratic System:

Establishment of a democratic system is an essential safeguard of liberty. Both liberty and democracy are supplementary to each other. We cannot conceive of a democracy without the presence of civil, economic, political and individual liberty. Likewise, in the absence of the right to freedom there can be no real democracy.

5. The Rights of one should not be dependent upon the will of others:

Laski suggests that the state must ensure that rights and freedoms of some people should not be dependent upon the will and happiness of others. The rulers and ruled should both be under the rule of law.

6. Fair Governmental Action:

For safeguarding Liberty, it is essential that the government should exercise unbiased and impartial control over every section of society. It must acts as a responsible transparent and accountable government.

7. Protection of Fundamental Rights:

One of the key methods of safeguarding liberty is to incorporate a charter of fundamental rights and freedoms in the constitution of the State. Along with it, judicial protection should be given to rights.

8. Independence of Judiciary:

Judiciary should be assigned the responsibility to protect all rights and freedoms of the people. For discharging such an important function, the judiciary must be made independent and fully empowered.

9. Separation of Powers:

Separation of powers should be secured between the legislature and executive. Judiciary should be totally separate from these. Any concentration or combination of these powers can be dangerous for Liberty

10. Decentralisation of Powers:

For safeguarding liberty against possible dictatorship/ authoritarianism, it is essential that decentralisation of powers should be affected. The power of the government, particularly its executive branch should be distributed among a number of organisations and these should be located at all the three levels of government-local, provincial/ regional and national.

11. Rule of Law:

All the people should be under the same laws and bound by same types of obligations. No one should be above law.

13. Economic Equality:

Equitable and fairer distribution of income, wealth and resources, and adequate opportunities for lively-hood are essential safeguards of Liberty. Without economic equality, there can be no real enjoyment of liberty.

14. Well Organised Interest Groups and Non-government Organisations:

One very essential safeguard for Liberty is the presence of well-organised interest groups and non-governmental organisations or voluntary social service organisations i.e. Civil Society. Such organisations can act unitedly for fight all violations of liberty.

All these conditions are necessary for securing Liberty of every person.

Related Articles:

• Rights: Meaning, Features and Types of Rights
• 12 Essential Features of Russian Bill of Rights

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4.2 Constitutions and Individual Liberties

Learning outcomes.

• Differentiate between negative rights and positive rights constitutions.
• Define constitutionalism.
• Analyze how different constitutional systems treat the individual.
• Define due process.
• Explain how the rule of law and its principles are important to individual freedom.

As discussed in Chapter 2: Political Behavior Is Human Behavior most countries have a formal constitution —a framework, blueprint, or foundation for the operation of a government. The constitution need not be in writing, in one document, or even labeled a constitution. Britain, New Zealand, and Israel do not have codified constitutions but instead use uncollected writings that establish the form of government and set out the principles of liberty. 14 In many countries, a series of documents, usually called the basic laws , codifies the government structure and individual rights. 15 If a country lacks a single document labeled a constitution, how does one know that certain writings serve as the country’s constitution? A constitution describes the underlying principles of the people and government, the structure of the branches of government, and their duties. It limits government, listing freedoms or rights reserved for the people, and it must be more difficult to amend or change than ordinary laws. 16

A constitution may be expressed in a way that emphasizes civil liberties as negative or positive rights. When political scientists say a constitution specifies negative rights , this means that it is written to emphasize limitations on government. Consider the wording of the First Amendment :

“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 17 (emphasis added)

The amendment is phrased to focus not on what the government owes the people but on the limitations on the government’s ability to infringe upon the rights of individuals. The US Constitution leans toward being a negative rights constitution because most of the Bill of Rights is written in terms of restrictions on the government.

In a positive rights constitution, rights are written in terms of a government obligation to guarantee the people’s rights. For example, article 5 of the German constitution, the German Basic Law , states:

“Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures. . . . Freedom of the press . . . shall be guaranteed .” 18 (emphasis added)

This positive rights constitution emphasizes the government’s guarantee of freedom to the individual. Though the US Constitution is primarily seen as a negative rights constitution, like most constitutions it also describes positive rights, as in those clauses that guarantee the right to something. 19 Most democratic constitutions written after World War II are positive rights constitutions. After the Nazis used the existing German constitution to restrict people’s freedoms in Germany and in the countries they conquered, people in the affected countries wanted assurances that the government recognized its obligation to the people and not just the people’s obligation to the government. Similar fears caused many countries not occupied by the Nazis to create positive rights constitutions. 20 These constitutions make the government the protector of freedom against all infringements. They do not just limit government action restricting the individual.

Positive vs. Negative Rights

In this short clip, the Center for Civic Education distinguishes between positive and negative rights.

A country’s constitution delineates the degree of freedom of action that the government allows the individual, and that degree varies by political system. An individualist system emphasizes individuals over the community, including the government, while a communitarian system emphasizes community cohesiveness while recognizing the importance of individual freedoms. Countries vary in terms of the nature of their systems and the degree to which they stress individualism or communitarianism.

What Are the Characteristics of Individualist Systems?

In an individualist system, individuals take precedence over the government. Society rests on the principle that individuals inherently possess rights that the government should preserve and promote. Two major styles of individualism are common today: libertarianism (also called classical liberalism) and modern liberalism . Libertarianism emphasizes restraints on government. Liberalism emphasizes the government’s obligation to enforce laws that protect personal autonomy and rights. Let’s review some of the different philosophies discussed in Chapter 3 in terms of how they impact civil liberties.

In libertarianism, individualists believe that governments exist to assist individuals in achieving their private interests. Therefore, libertarians place many restrictions (negative rights) on the government. As John Stuart Mill observed in his essay On Liberty (1859), in a strict individualist society:

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.” 21

The focus is on the individual, and the benefits to society that might flow from any restriction on the individual must be clear and convincing. This does not mean that the government can never restrict individual action, nor that the good of society need be wholly ignored. Still, it does mean there must be proof of sufficient harmful effects to justify any restraint. This is where the conflict between the individual and society occurs. It is here that the US style of “no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech” comes into play. For example, a person in the United States can say anything against any political candidate; they can even lie about the candidate. 22 With the restriction on government action abridging free speech, no laws restrict that person’s conduct. However, they cannot say they will kill a candidate at three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. This is a threat to an individual’s safety and to society’s law and order, so the government has laws to punish the person for making the threat. Further, some US statutes make a person liable for damages if they engage in defamation—that is, if they lie about and cause harm to a private person—although these statutes do not apply to lies about political candidates. Thus, even with the United States’ negative rights libertarian-style constitution, the government is not prohibited from imposing restrictions “abridging the freedom of speech” in every situation at all times.

In an individualist society formed in a liberal style, the government actively protects individual rights. For example, under the German Basic Law and its guarantees of free speech, the government can prosecute a person for making false statements or heckling a candidate while they are making a speech. This is a violation of the Basic Law because the rights of free speech “shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour.” 23 Liberal governments are more proactive than libertarian ones in protecting the individual’s rights. Because they do so to protect the rights of all individuals for the good of society, they place more restrictions on the individual. Still, governments in liberal societies cannot wholly deny a person’s individual liberties.

What Are the Characteristics of Communitarian Systems?

A communitarian system emphasizes the role the government plays in the lives of citizens. Communitarian systems are grounded in the belief that people need the community and its values to create a cohesive society. Government exists not only to protect rights but also to form a political community to solve public problems. There is a public good, and it is the government’s job to protect it, even if that means restricting individual behaviors. Communitarians oppose excessive individualism, arguing that it leads people to be selfish or egocentric, which is harmful to a community. Individuals do not stand apart from society in discrete autonomy; they are part of society and have a role to play in protecting society.

How countries put communitarianism into practice varies widely. Some countries, such as China, Singapore, and Malaysia, have authoritarian governments. This style of government enforces obedience to government authority by strongly limiting personal freedoms. These governments emphasize and enshrine in their constitutions social obligations and the common good. The Chinese constitution states, “Disruption of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.” 24 In article 35, the Chinese constitution provides that “citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy the freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, the procession and demonstration.” 25 However, comparing these two clauses with actual practices in the People's Republic of China shows that the government’s emphasis is not on protecting individual freedom and autonomy but on protecting the government’s view of a cohesive society. 26

Responsive communitarianism contrasts with the authoritarian style of communitarianism and the perceived selfishness of libertarianism. It seeks to blend the common good and individual autonomy while not allowing either to take precedence over the other. The individual is within society, the community, so the community constructs part of the individual identity. In responsive communitarianism , individual rights are balanced with societal norms of the good, and society or the government restrains the individual when individual action challenges an accepted norm. For example, the majority of people living in the United States today oppose slavery and racial injustice. However, had those people been born in the 18th century, many would have supported such concepts. Every community has standards that it declares essential to the common good—the common ground on which the community is formed. In circumstances where the common good takes precedence over the individual, conflict can ensue, and the society, including the government, must decide how to resolve the dispute.

The COVID-19 pandemic mentioned at the beginning of this chapter resulted in severe illness and mass deaths around the world. Many viewed government actions restricting individuals during the pandemic as justified because the challenge the disease posed to society was severe enough to warrant temporarily suspending certain freedoms. People accepted or rejected these government restrictions depending on the degree to which they accepted scientific explanations and on their views of individualism and communitarianism. Scientists explained how the disease spread, and government leaders urged compliance. In many areas of the world, the government instituted restrictions on movement, required that people wear face masks, and punished persons who violated these edicts. Some individuals claimed that their rights were being violated. Some argued that masks do not make a significant difference in transmission of the virus and are unnecessary in most situations. Significant scientific evidence refutes this claim, but such individuals refused to accept it. They also argued that it is their inalienable right to decide whether or not to risk becoming sick or dying, prioritizing that right over the risk they might pose to others. 27 When initial illness rates started to decline and vaccinations became available, the argument shifted to when and how to open up the social sphere and whether to require that people be vaccinated to enter certain places or to participate in certain activities. 28 These responses to the pandemic are a perfect example of the conflicts inherent in everyday situations that require a balance between individuals’ civil liberties and the government’s obligation to act for the common good.

Whether and to what degree a system is individualistic or communitarian does not determine if the system is a constitutional government. Simply having a document labeled a constitution does not give a country a constitutional government; to be considered a constitutional government, a country must practice constitutionalism.

What Is Constitutionalism?

The three main elements of constitutionalism are adherence to the rule of law, limited government, and guarantees of individual rights. The rule of law has four principles:

• Accountability : Government and private actors are accountable under the law, and no one is above the law.
• Just laws : The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and applied evenly. They protect fundamental rights, including protecting persons and property and certain core human rights.
• Open government : The processes by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced are accessible, fair, and efficient.
• Accessible and impartial dispute resolution : Justice is delivered in a timely manner by competent, ethical, and independent representatives, and neutral decision makers are accessible, have adequate resources, and reflect the communities they serve.

Constitutionalism balances limited government with the fundamental worth of each individual. The government is limited because people have some right to make their own life decisions. The fundamental worth of each individual means that people have some right to self-determination, as shown in a bill of rights in a constitution. Maintaining a balance between government authority and individual freedom is a challenge.

Utilizing due process is part of the rule of law and constitutionalism, so it is more robustly defended in countries that practice constitutionalism than it is in those with constitutions that do not adhere to all the elements of constitutionalism.

Due process is a legal requirement that the government respect the rights of the people, and it is a demonstration of the rule of law and the balancing of government power with individual rights. In the US Constitution, the due process clause provides that no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” 29 This clause applies to all persons, not just citizens of the United States. There are two aspects of due process: procedural due process and substantive due process. Procedural due process concerns the written guidelines for how the government interacts with individuals, while substantive due process concerns the individual’s right to be treated fairly when interacting with the government. A violation of due process offends the rule of law because it puts individuals or groups above the law or treats individuals or groups without equality.

Due Process of Law

In this video clip, Randy E. Barnett, professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center, looks at the overarching concept of due process through the lens of US government and its British origins.

When one thinks of the due process of law as government fairness to all persons, civil rights and civil liberties become intertwined. In the landmark same-sex marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges , the United States Supreme Court held that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment guarantees that the government will defend as a fundamental liberty the right to choose whom one will marry. The court also held that to deny that liberty would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because doing so would amount to unequal treatment of same-sex and opposite-sex couples, thus denying a same-sex couple equal protection of the law and amounting to a violation of the couple’s civil rights. 30

Thus, same-sex marriage is both a civil liberty and a civil rights issue. The right to marry is a civil liberty because it is a freedom from government interference in one’s choice of a life partner. Same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue because to deny same-sex couples the right to marry is to subject them to unequal treatment. The case of same-sex marriage shows how both civil rights (equality) and civil liberties (freedom from government interference) are a part of the fair government treatment of individuals.

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‘Freedom’ Means Something Different to Liberals and Conservatives. Here’s How the Definition Split—And Why That Still Matters

W e tend to think of freedom as an emancipatory ideal—and with good reason. Throughout history, the desire to be free inspired countless marginalized groups to challenge the rule of political and economic elites. Liberty was the watchword of the Atlantic revolutionaries who, at the end of the 18th century, toppled autocratic kings, arrogant elites and ( in Haiti ) slaveholders, thus putting an end to the Old Regime. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Black civil rights activists and feminists fought for the expansion of democracy in the name of freedom, while populists and progressives struggled to put an end to the economic domination of workers.

While these groups had different objectives and ambitions, sometimes putting them at odds with one another, they all agreed that their main goal—freedom—required enhancing the people’s voice in government. When the late Rep. John Lewis called on Americans to “let freedom ring” , he was drawing on this tradition.

But there is another side to the story of freedom as well. Over the past 250 years, the cry for liberty has also been used by conservatives to defend elite interests. In their view, true freedom is not about collective control over government; it consists in the private enjoyment of one’s life and goods. From this perspective, preserving freedom has little to do with making government accountable to the people. Democratically elected majorities, conservatives point out, pose just as much, or even more of a threat to personal security and individual right—especially the right to property—as rapacious kings or greedy elites. This means that freedom can best be preserved by institutions that curb the power of those majorities, or simply by shrinking the sphere of government as much as possible.

This particular way of thinking about freedom was pioneered in the late 18th century by the defenders of the Old Regime. From the 1770s onward, as revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic rebelled in the name of liberty, a flood of pamphlets, treatises and newspaper articles appeared with titles such as Some Observations On Liberty , Civil Liberty Asserted or On the Liberty of the Citizen . Their authors vehemently denied that the Atlantic Revolutions would bring greater freedom. As, for instance, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson—a staunch opponent of the American Revolution—explained, liberty consisted in the “security of our rights.” And from that perspective, the American colonists already were free, even though they lacked control over the way in which they were governed. As British subjects, they enjoyed “more security than was ever before enjoyed by any people.” This meant that the colonists’ liberty was best preserved by maintaining the status quo; their attempts to govern themselves could only end in anarchy and mob rule.

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In the course of the 19th century this view became widespread among European elites, who continued to vehemently oppose the advent of democracy. Benjamin Constant, one of Europe’s most celebrated political thinkers, rejected the example of the French revolutionaries, arguing that they had confused liberty with “participation in collective power.” Instead, freedom-lovers should look to the British constitution, where hierarchies were firmly entrenched. Here, Constant claimed, freedom, understood as “peaceful enjoyment and private independence,” was perfectly secure—even though less than five percent of British adults could vote. The Hungarian politician Józseph Eötvös, among many others, agreed. Writing in the wake of the brutally suppressed revolutions that rose against several European monarchies in 1848, he complained that the insurgents, battling for manhood suffrage, had confused liberty with “the principle of the people’s supremacy.” But such confusion could only lead to democratic despotism. True liberty—defined by Eötvös as respect for “well-earned rights”—could best be achieved by limiting state power as much as possible, not by democratization.

In the U.S., conservatives were likewise eager to claim that they, and they alone, were the true defenders of freedom. In the 1790s, some of the more extreme Federalists tried to counter the democratic gains of the preceding decade in the name of liberty. In the view of the staunch Federalist Noah Webster, for instance, it was a mistake to think that “to obtain liberty, and establish a free government, nothing was necessary but to get rid of kings, nobles, and priests.” To preserve true freedom—which Webster defined as the peaceful enjoyment of one’s life and property—popular power instead needed to be curbed, preferably by reserving the Senate for the wealthy. Yet such views were slower to gain traction in the United States than in Europe. To Webster’s dismay, overall, his contemporaries believed that freedom could best be preserved by extending democracy rather than by restricting popular control over government.

But by the end of the 19th century, conservative attempts to reclaim the concept of freedom did catch on. The abolition of slavery, rapid industrialization and mass migration from Europe expanded the agricultural and industrial working classes exponentially, as well as giving them greater political agency. This fueled increasing anxiety about popular government among American elites, who now began to claim that “mass democracy” posed a major threat to liberty, notably the right to property. Francis Parkman, scion of a powerful Boston family, was just one of a growing number of statesmen who raised doubts about the wisdom of universal suffrage, as “the masses of the nation … want equality more than they want liberty.”

William Graham Sumner, an influential Yale professor, likewise spoke for many when he warned of the advent of a new, democratic kind of despotism—a danger that could best be avoided by restricting the sphere of government as much as possible. “ Laissez faire ,” or, in blunt English, “mind your own business,” Sumner concluded, was “the doctrine of liberty.”

Being alert to this history can help us to understand why, today, people can use the same word—“freedom”—to mean two very different things. When conservative politicians like Rand Paul and advocacy groups FreedomWorks or the Federalist Society talk about their love of liberty, they usually mean something very different from civil rights activists like John Lewis—and from the revolutionaries, abolitionists and feminists in whose footsteps Lewis walked. Instead, they are channeling 19th century conservatives like Francis Parkman and William Graham Sumner, who believed that freedom is about protecting property rights—if need be, by obstructing democracy. Hundreds of years later, those two competing views of freedom remain largely unreconcilable.

Annelien de Dijn is the author of Freedom: An Unruly History , available now from Harvard University Press.

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Essay: Liberty and Equality Today

When the delegates to the Constitution Convention were preparing to sign the new Constitution, Benjamin Franklin gave a speech to say why his fellow delegates should sign the Constitution. Franklin admitted that it was not a perfect document, and that he had his doubts about some parts of it. Nevertheless, he believed that it was a great framework of government that would protect the liberties of the people and was the best that could be obtained considering that they were fallible men. He and the other Framers affixed their signatures to the great document of freedom because of the promise it had to create a lasting republic on free principles.

It was a unique moment in world history that a scattered and diverse people in America could stop at a critical period to deliberate over a whole new government and the founding of a nation on a core set of principles. The promise of America in the vision of the Founders was that of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The natural rights republic new concept was grounded upon principles that did not change with the passing of time or the changes in culture.  This novus ordo seclorum —“new order for the ages”—was not created for a particular race, privileged aristocratic social class, or member of an established religion, but for all equally.

With all of the promise of these enduring principles, America was a nation in which African-Americans suffered the horrors of slavery, women could not vote, and Native Americans were roundly denied almost any rights.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 that, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued, until it be obtained” (James Madison, Federalist No. 51 , 1788).

However, these groups were not living under a just government that protected their rights or fulfilled the purposes for which it was created. But, were the principles of natural justice themselves flawed, or were they applied by fallible men?

For nearly two hundred years, African-Americans, women, Native Americans, and other groups have fought to win equal rights by arguing that America should live up to these ideals.  They wanted the same right to participate equally in the American political system as citizens and enjoy the “American Dream.” They could have rejected that society and its principles for discriminating against them for so long. They could have worked outside the system for radical change or worked to destroy the system as has been done in other countries throughout modern history. However, they consistently appealed to the same principles that animated the Founders in creating the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and used their right of free speech and freedom of assembly to argue for nothing less than full participation in American society and enjoyment of their equal rights as citizens and humans endowed with inalienable rights.

Even after the many successes the movements for liberty and equality achieved, the debate continued. Today, debates over gay marriage, affirmative action, and economic justice, and the role of the government in resolving these disputes, are still highly contentious. The debates often revolve around different views of what rights are embedded in the natural law as opposed to what might be just commonly held ideas by the majority. At other times, justice can be interpreted as individual conscience applied to society. Is this how the Founders understood natural law or justice? Of course, in any issue, there are contending sides who believe that they are arguing according to a principle. This is why free and open discourse employing reason must guide deliberation in a self-governing society and why reason must trump mere ideology.

Another change in recent American thinking about issues of diversity, equality, and liberty is a redefinition of idea of equality. The Founding vision equality of opportunity, where all have the same chance to employ their talents and merits, in American politics, economy, and society has been supplanted by an advocacy of an equality of outcomes.

Some believe that equal opportunity is often not enough because there are still those who are more successful than others and thus unequal. All people must be made equal by a government which regulates society and reverses centuries of discrimination by granting special favors to certain groups such as women, African-Americans, and Native Americans. Is this a proper understanding of equality? Does this create a more just society? Are certain groups entitled to special protections and favors by the government? Our republic and its free enterprise economy was founded upon the idea of equality under the law in which all had the same opportunity to pursue their happiness.

America has always been and continues to be a diverse country. One question that will confront all Americans is how to ensure that every citizen, regardless of skin color, sex, or religion, will enjoy the liberty and equality that the country was founded upon. Another question is whether Americans will continue to agree upon the fundamental principles upon which the country was founded and the meaning of those principles or whether we will be fragmented into groups with a narrow perspective and only look out for our own interests. The perennial challenge of liberty and equality are how to unite the goals of freedom and the common good.

What was so exceptional about the American Founding was that the nation offered an experiment for mankind in liberty and equality.

The Founders did not merely attack monarchy and aristocracy but looked to build a lasting republic on the principles best suited to human nature. They were not merely locked in their time and place in the eighteenth century but were far-seeing statesmen and lawgivers who framed an enduring Constitution for a lasting republic. Rather than evolving or changing with the times, the Constitution had immutable principles that would allow Americans to govern themselves down through the ages. It did not matter for the Founders what the diverse character of the citizenry was, but rather than they embraced the universal principles upon which America was founded.

Related Content

Liberty and Equality Today

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The evolution of american liberties in fifty documents.

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Liberty, diversity, and slavery: the beginnings of american freedom, freedombox 8328.jpg.

Gold box by Clares LeRoux, 1735, given to Alexander Hamilton, Esq., for his defense of freedom of the press in the trial of Peter Zenger. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Treasures Collection (Collection 978), X-88.

The United States of America has a reputation as a beacon of freedom and diversity from the colonial period of its history. From the beginning, however, Americans' freedoms were tied to a mixture of religious and ethnic affiliations that privileged some inhabitants of North America over others. Although European ideas of liberty set the tone for what was possible, those liberties looked somewhat different in colonial North America, where indigenous and African peoples and cultures also had some influence. The result was greater freedom for some and unprecedented slavery and dispossession for others, making colonial America a society of greater diversity—for better and for worse—than Europe.

America's indigenous traditions of immigration and freedom created the context that made European colonization possible. Since time immemorial, the original inhabitants of the Americas were accustomed to dealing with strangers. They forged alliances and exchange networks, accepted political refugees, and permitted people in need of land and protection to settle in territories that they controlled but could share. No North American society was cut off from the world or completely autonomous. Thus, there was no question about establishing ties with the newcomers arriving from Europe. Initially arriving in small numbers, bearing valuable items to trade, and offering added protection from enemies, these Europeans could, it seemed, strengthen indigenous communities. They were granted rights to use certain stretches of land, much in the way that other Native American peoples in need would have been, especially in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. However, Europeans, and all they brought with them—disease, beliefs regarding private property, ever more immigrants, and, occasionally, ruthless violence—undermined indigenous liberty. When Native Americans contested this, wars erupted—wars they could not win. Those who were able to avoid living as slaves or virtual servants of the Europeans (as some did) were driven from their homes.

Occasionally, a colonial ruler who wanted to preserve peace, like William Penn, would strive to respect the rights of indigenous Americans . However, given that both indigenous and European ideas of liberty rested on access to land and its resources , it was difficult for both Europeans and Native Americans to be free in the same territory at the same time without some sort of neutral arbiter. On the eve of the American Revolution , it seemed as if the British government might be able to play that role. After all, British Americans also looked to the monarchy to guarantee their liberties. American independence ended that option. Thereafter, America's original inhabitants had no one to mediate between them and the people who gained so much from exploiting them. Nor did the Africans brought as slaves to work what had once been their land.

For Africans, as with Native Americans, liberty was inseparable from one's family ties. Kinship (whether actual or fictive) gave an individual the rights and protection necessary to be able to live in freedom. To be captured by enemies and separated from one's kin put a person in tremendous danger. Although some captives could be adopted into other societies and treated more or less as equals, most were reduced to a condition of slavery and had little influence over their destiny. Even before they arrived in North America, Africans brought to the New World as slaves had already been separated from their home communities within Africa. Without kin, they had to forge new relationships with complete strangers—and everyone, including most fellow Africans they encountered, was a stranger—if they were to improve their lot at all. Escape was very difficult, and no community of fugitive slaves lasted for long. Unlike Native Americans, who could find a degree of freedom by moving away from the frontier, Africans had to struggle for what liberty they could from within the British society whose prosperity often depended on their forced labor .

Europeans, particularly those with wealth enough to own land or slaves, possessed the greatest freedoms in early America. The French, Spanish, and Dutch established colonies on land that would eventually become part of the United States. Each brought a distinct approach to liberty. For the French and Spanish, who came from societies where peasants still did most of the work of farming, liberty lay in the avoidance of agricultural labor. Aristocrats, who owned the land and profited from the peasants' toil, stood at the top with the most freedom. Merchants and artisans, who lived and worked in cities free of feudal obligations, came next. In North America, the French fur traders who preferred to spend their lives bartering among Native Americans rather than farming in French Canada echoed this view of freedom. Missionaries attempting to convert those same peoples could be seen as another variant of this tradition of liberty, one unknown to the Protestant British. In every colony, Europeans lived in a range of circumstances, from poor indentured servants to wealthy merchants and plantation owners.

Religion was inseparable from the experience of liberty in the European empires. The French and Spanish empires were officially Roman Catholic and did all within their power to convert or expel those who would not conform. The Dutch, on the other hand, had a different approach, befitting their condition as a small, newly independent, but economically dynamic nation. Though only Reformed Protestants enjoyed the full benefits of Dutch citizenship, they displayed an unusual openness to talented foreign immigrants, like Iberian Jews, while they relegated native-born Roman Catholics to second-class status. It was through their ties to Amsterdam, Dutch Brazil, and the Dutch Caribbean that Jews first staked a claim to live and work in North America .

The English colonies played the definitive role in early America's experience of liberty. As immigrants from Scotland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and elsewhere became incorporated into the Anglo-American world, they staked a claim to liberty through British culture and institutions. The heritage on which the British Empire rested was complicated, however, encompassing a great deal of political conflict (two revolutions in the seventeenth century alone) and religious diversity. The British colonies in North America were home to the Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the Roman Catholics of Maryland, as well as to Anglicans, members of the Church of England. Living in America offered an excellent chance to claim the rights and liberties of Englishmen, even when it seemed like those liberties were imperiled back in Europe. Indeed, the desire to preserve those liberties from the threat of a new British government prompted colonists to fight for independence in 1776.

Liberty in eighteenth-century Britain was associated with the national representational body of Parliament and the Protestant religion, which had been declared the official faith of England in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, a long cycle of constitutional crises, civil wars, and revolution drove home what by the eighteenth century was a commonplace ethos for many Englishmen: liberty depended on Protestantism, property ownership, and a monarchy mixed with representative government. Conversely, Catholicism and absolute monarchy, as existed in Spain and France, brought tyranny and a loss of liberty.

Liberty thus began in America with a peculiar mix of religious, ethnic, political, economic, and legal associations, all of them based on denying civil, religious, and economic liberty to others. Among the free, European-descended, Protestant colonists who enjoyed the most liberty, only men with property—who were deemed eligible to vote and hold public office—gained the full benefits. The liberties of women, children, and men without property depended on their connections to propertied men, whether as relatives, patrons, or employers. As most British colonists understood history, English liberties had been secured only after a long, hard fight, and these liberties were under constant threat—from Roman Catholics, the French, or the greed and corruption that, they thought, inevitably arose when those in government grew too powerful. Liberty, they believed, was limited. The idea that everyone could enjoy similar liberties did not cross their mind; they worried instead about the possibility that everyone in America could be a slave or servant to someone else.

In many ways, the story of American liberty is about how people of different religious and ethnic origins gradually acquired rights that had been associated only with Protestant English men of property. Despite their original association with a particular national, ethnic, and religious group, English liberties proved fairly flexible in America. Americans lived in a society with more chances to attain the ideal of liberty associated with owning property—particularly a farm of one's own—than was possible in England, where property ownership was increasingly restricted to a small elite. Colonies like Pennsylvania granted far more religious freedom than existed in England. The colonial charters granted by the British monarchy protected these liberties, and, in fact, Pennsylvania celebrated the anniversary of these constitutional freedoms guaranteed by the English crown when it the commissioned the liberty bell .

The early American belief in the limited nature of liberty helps us to understand why it was so difficult for those who had it to extend it to others. Americans lived in a world full of slavery—the ultimate opposite of freedom—an institution that had not been present in England for hundreds of years. And yet, the colonial history of America, tied very early to the promotion of slavery, convinced many colonists that the ability to hold non-European people (mostly African, but also Native American) as slaves was a fundamental English liberty. Some even returned to England with their slaves, and expected English laws to protect their property in people as they did in the colonies. Free colonists were surrounded by people—servants and slaves—who either lacked liberty or, as in the case of Native Americans, were rapidly losing it. This paradox helps explain the reluctance of colonial Americans to allow others, like more recent German immigrant s, to share the same liberties they enjoyed. In many ways, their prosperity depended on those peoples' lack of liberty and property. All could try for freedom in colonial America, but not all had equal access to it.

America's history of liberty is inseparable from its history of immigration and colonization dating back to the first Native American treaties. Unfortunately, the liberty Europeans claimed in America was accompanied by slavery and reduced liberties for many others. The possibility of liberty for some was always accompanied by a struggle for freedom for many others.

Evan Haefeli is Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, where he researches and teaches on Native American history, colonial American history, and the history of religious tolerance.

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Essay on Liberty

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• Essay on the Safeguards of Liberty in a Modern State

Essay # 1. Definition of Liberty:

Definition of liberty and two aspects of liberty – The term liberty is a derivation from the Latin word “liber”, which means freedom. Negatively speaking, liberty means absence of all restraints, while positively speaking, it means freedom to do whatever one wants. Thus in the second sense liberty is of the nature of licence, pure and simple. This type of liberty is not possible in a modern state, where everyone has to adjust himself to the fair play of freedom of all.

It is in this context that Herbert Spencer wrote:

“Every man is free to do that which he wills provided he does not infringe the equal freedom of any other man.” Thus liberty has two sides. In the first place, an individual in order to express his personality in thought, word and action wants freedom, i.e., absence of restraint on his freedom in thought, word and action. In the second place liberty carries, with itself a kind of restraint on his own freedom for the sake of adjustment of similar freedom of others in the state. Thus there are provisions for punishment in the criminal code for those who exceed the limits put on their freedom.

Essay # 2. Various Kinds of Liberty :

Liberty can be divided into five kinds – natural liberty, civil liberty, political liberty, economic liberty and national liberty.

1. Natural Liberty:

In modern states there cannot be any natural liberty. This type of liberty might have existed in the pre-state stage of human civilisation.

According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, the people enjoyed natural liberty in the state of nature and men lost such liberty with the creation of the state.

Natural liberty is an unlimited and unrestricted freedom. This concept of liberty is imaginary and cannot exist in a civilised society. This type of liberty is actually license. Only the strong can enjoy the right in a jungle life. The weak will be exploited. Might can be right in a jungle, not in a civil community. So we reject the natural liberty as a bogus one.

2. Civil Liberty:

Civil liberty implies freedom enjoyed by the people in a civil society. This type of liberty emanates from the civil rights which include right to life, liberty and property. These are the basic civil amenities, without which a man, whether he is a citizen or an alien, cannot lead a civil life.

It is also the bounden duty of the state to provide these opportunities to the individuals in the state. About civil liberty, R. G. Gettell rightly said- “Civil liberty consists of the rights and privileges which the state creates and protects for its subjects.”

3. Political Liberty:

Political liberty stands for the political rights to have a share in the government. Such political liberty is possible only in a democracy. The democratic functions of the state will be impossible if the state does not provide its citizens with political liberty.

Stephen Butler Leacock defined political liberty as “the right of the people to choose their government which should be responsible to the general body of the people.” According to Harold J. Laski- “Political liberty is the power to be active in affairs of the state. Political liberty is identical with the constitutional liberty which means democratic rule.”

In order to make political liberty real, the citizens will have four political rights, which are discussed below:

(i) Right to vote:

The citizens will have the right to vote on attaining majority to elect the legislature. In India the voting age is from 18 years. Almost all the democratic countries have granted this right to the citizens, since it is the most basic element in a democracy.

(ii) Right to be elected:

Not only the right to vote but also the right to stand as a candidate is another important political right in a democracy.

(iii) Right to periodical election:

The legislatures and all representative bodies must not be permanent. These institutions should be elected after some fixed time. In India the Lok Sabha which is the lower house of the parliament is elected after every five years.

(iv) Right to criticise the government:

The citizens are to be given the right to elect a strong opposition to criticise the party in power. The other method of criticism is freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble peacefully for demonstration against the government.

4. Economic Liberty:

Civil and political liberty will be meaningless without economic liberty. The state should see that there is no imbalance in the economic life of the people because of concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

It does not mean attainment of economic equality but removal of side economic disparity. It implies the right to work and right to a decent living. It also includes other benefits like sickness insurance, old age pension, unemployment insurance, etc.

5. National Liberty:

It is linked with the theory of one nationality, one state. It implies that every nation must have a right of self-determination. It may mean freedom from the foreign rule or creation of a full-fledged sovereign state by each nation.

By exercising this liberty India became independent from the control of the British imperial power. By dint of similar right Bangladesh became an independent sovereign country by severing herself from Pakistan.

Essay # 3. Relation between Liberty and Authority:

Liberty is the spontaneous expression of man’s free choice to live the life in accordance with one’s own will. Law apparently puts some restraints on man’s individuality and fulfillment. Behind the law there is the sovereign authority of state. If law is violated, the violator is punished. There are two opposite views on the relation between liberty and law.

Theory of the Individualists:

According to the individualists, law or authority is detrimental to the individual personality of man. John Stuart Mill and William Godwin are the chief exponents of the individualist theory. Mill had no hesitation that laws of the state are clear infringement of the liberty of the individuals. So Mill was opposed to all powers of the authority except those necessary for the free exercise of other individual’s liberty. So long as the liberty of an individual does not hamper the liberty of other individuals there should be no authority to curtail the liberty of the former.

William Godwin went a step further and maintained that “law is an institution of most pernicious tendency” and that every law is a “direct encroachment on individual liberty” . The extreme view is held by the anarchists who suggested that the state with all its legal system must be abolished.

Theory of the Idealists:

A contrary view is held by the idealists who want that the state should be all-powerful and the individuals must seek salvation through the state. The individuals should be concerned with their duties to the state and must surrender all their liberties. It is the concern of the state to see to the well-being of the individuals.

The state being an embodiment of morality stands on a higher footing than the individuals. The individuals will get the due benefits within the state, not outside it. All individuals must subordinate themselves to the ethical and social consciousness of the state.

Conclusion:

The two views mentioned above are exaggeration of facts. Individual liberty cannot be a wild buffalo. The state is not to rope the freedom of individuals either. We must seek a via media. Both liberty and law must coexist. Law does not infringe the individual liberty. The idealist view that liberty lies in obedience to law is also not correct.

The state exists for the all-round development of the society. If law is abolished there will be anarchy. In anarchy the liberty of the individual will not thrive. Law endures a social order and creates conditions for liberty. Liberty is the end of law. If law fails to protect individual liberty that law or authority is not good.

Essay # 4. Safeguards of Liberty in a Modern State:

Liberty is the finest fruit of human civilisation. So it is to be preserved. There are various instruments by which the individual liberty can be safeguarded.

These are discussed below:

1. Democracy:

Democracy as a form of government is most conducive to the growth of liberty. This is considered the best form of government, because its main concern is to upkeep the freedom of the people. Without the opportunity of freedom there cannot be any liberty. It is, therefore, seen that the liberty of an individual is best safeguarded in a democratic country like England and the USA.

2. Guarantee of Fundamental Rights in the Constitution:

Without rights there cannot be liberty. Some of the rights are considered basic and called the fundamental rights. In constitutions of some democratic countries these fundamental rights are incorporated and guaranteed. It means that no authority can take away these rights.

Thus the constitutions of the USA, France and India have enumerated these rights and guaranteed their protection. If these rights are inroaded by any authority, the individual can approach the courts of law. These fundamental rights are, therefore, some protective umbrellas over the individual liberty.

3. Separation of Power:

If the legislative, executive and judicial powers are combined in one person or one organisation there is scope for poaching on the individual liberty. So Charles-Louis Montesquieu and Sir William Blackstone pleaded for separation of powers, i.e., three kinds of power should be vested to three separate bodies. While there should be as much separation of power as possible it is not always practicable to have rigid separation of powers.

4. Independence of the Judiciary:

Judiciary is one of the three organs of the government. We have already noticed the good of separation of three organs of government. But the utmost importance is attached to the independence of the judiciary; it means that the executive or the legislature must not control or curb the power of the judges. If the judges are independent, much of the abuses of the individual liberty may be avoided. The independent as against committed judges help the protection of individual liberty.

5. Elaborate System of Local Self-Government:

It is common knowledge that concentration of power in one hand or in one administration may infringe the individual liberty. If the power is split up from the top to the bottom it will create an healthy climate for individual liberty. So there should be a central government, a provincial government and a village or town administration.

This type of division of administrative power will not encourage the pyramid of powers in one place.

According to Harold J. Laski:

“The more widespread distribution of power in the state, the more decentralized its character, the more likely men are to be zealous for freedom. Maximum satisfaction is at least partly a function of maximum consultation.”

6. Absence of Privilege:

Liberty flourishes best under an atmosphere of socio-economic parity. No class should be exempt from paying taxes and there should be no privilege like the privy purse which the princes of the native states of India were entitled to enjoy. If there is privilege of any form in the society, liberty will be at stake.

7. Eternal Vigilance:

Liberty will be on low key if the people sleep over their rights and are not conscious of these rights. So, Lord James Bryce rightly said- “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Only an enlightened and conscious people can zealously guard their rights. They should raise the protest at the slightest encroachment on their liberty. According to Harold J. Laski- “Liberty is never real unless the government is called to account when it invades the rights of the people.”

8. Rule of Law:

The concept of rule of law emanates from the British administrative law. It means that in the eye of law all persons are equal, whether rich or poor, high or low. According to Albert Venn Dicey- “No person is above law, and every person, whatever his rank or position, is subject to the ordinary, law of the realm and amenable to the jurisdiction of ordinary tribunals.” So every official from the Prime Minister to the Police Constable are subject to the same set of law including punishment.

The second aspect of die rule of law is that no person can be arrested or detained without a law for such arrest or detention. Against all kinds of arbitrary arrests, the civil remedy is the writ of habeas corpus which ensures that if a person is detained without sufficient ground he should be set free by the civil court.

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The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow

By David French

Opinion Columnist

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

But that’s not the only answer. American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of faith in American public life. Both of them torment each other, and both of them have made constitutional mistakes that have triggered deep cultural conflict.

One of the most valuable and humbling experiences in life is to experience an American community as part of the in-group and as part of the out-group. I spent most of my life living in the cultural and political center of American evangelical Christianity, but in the past nine years I’ve been relentlessly pushed to the periphery . The process has been painful. Even so, I’m grateful for my new perspective.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid , when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship .

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians. If the left is angry at conservatives for seeking the protection of a man like Trump, then it has only itself to blame.

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• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of liberty in English

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liberty noun ( FREEDOM )

• He was an apostle of world liberty.
• 'Happiness', ' honesty ' and 'liberty' are abstract nouns .
• He fought for his liberty.
• She bought her liberty with hard work .
• I am not at liberty to tell you the facts .
• (as) free as a bird idiom
• at leisure idiom
• at will idiom
• free country
• free rein idiom
• non-autonomous
• non-didactic
• non-directed
• non-restricted
• non-restrictive
• the world is someone's oyster idiom
• walk free idiom
• wiggle room
• wriggle room

liberty noun ( BAD BEHAVIOR )

• churlishness
• coarse-grained
• neanderthal
• obnoxiously
• obnoxiousness
• offensively
• offensiveness
• unceremonious
• unprintable

liberty | Intermediate English

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• liberty (FREEDOM)
• be at liberty to do something
• liberty (BAD BEHAVIOR)
• take liberties (with something )
• take liberties (with someone )
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