Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the right to vote beginning at age eighteen:
This right cannot be protected for young people any better than for old. We should have universal registration when people reach eighteen. If we can register everyone for the military draft, why can't we register everyone to vote?
There you have it. We've got rights, but they are threatened. They need restoration and enforcement. They also need expansion and updates. But that's not the half of it. There's also the matter of rights we ought to have that were never imagined by the creators of our Bill of Rights.
II. RIGHTS WE NEED
In
places where we are not already protected, or where we have been shown
to be vulnerable over the last eight years or before, legislation and
amendments can be used to expand our existing rights and establish
entirely new ones. All of our rights, new and old, should be properly
protected by placing violations of them in the criminal code.
1. The Right to Vote
Proposing a right to vote only surprises people who believe we already have it. Perhaps the most important as well as the least controversial right that we could create is one that Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has long advocated for: the individual national right to vote (allowing the creation of national uniform standards for elections). I would add as well the right to directly elect the president, vice president, and all other elected officials, and to have one's vote publicly and locally counted in a manner that can be repeated and verified if questioned (effectively requiring hand-counted paper ballots), and the right to paid time off work to vote on election day, which would be made a national holiday or scheduled on a weekend. I would also propose establishing and enforcing serious criminal penalties for election fraud.
I think we should consider as well a less orthodox proposal, namely the right to be a candidate for elected office. Even if we all had the full and verifiable and unencumbered right to vote, our democracy would remain a weak one as long as only the extremely wealthy and those willing to take payments from the wealthy are able to credibly compete for elected office. We should have a right to know that the candidates in our elections are not corrupted by bribes (including the currently legal bribes we euphemistically call "contributions"), and the right to ourselves be candidates in more than a nominal sense unless prevented by something other than our wealth and income.
2. Right to Expanded Magna Carta Protections
We need to establish strict protection from arbitrary arrest, detention, exile, or enforced disappearance, and from all forms of slavery and forced labor, with criminal penalties for violators and compensation for victims. We need to strengthen our right against unreasonable search and seizure in this electronic age, amending the Constitution and/or replacing FISA with legislation that effectively protects us, creates criminal penalties for violators, and compensates victims. We should place in the Constitution new language to strictly ban all torture, all cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, rendition, medical or scientific experimentation on humans without their consent, and state executions. We should create criminal penalties for violators and compensation for victims.
We need to strengthen or create some additional rights for those who find themselves within our criminal justice system, including the right to presumption of innocence until proven guilty of a crime, the right to be told the charges against you at the time of your arrest, the right not to be detained without being arrested and charged, the right to obtain and to use in court a videotape of any relevant interrogations or confessions, the right of the accused to be detained separately from those already convicted, the right of juveniles to be detained separately from adults, the right not to be imprisoned for inability to fulfill a contract, the right to a penal system aimed at reformation and social rehabilitation, and the right to compensation for false conviction and punishment. The United States currently locks up a greater percentage of its citizens than any other nation, a heavy-handed and backward approach to social problems that mirrors our approach to foreign policy. Protecting innocents from the imprisonment onslaught and redirecting imprisonment to include rehabilitation, education, and preparation for civic participation are essential to undoing this damage.
I refer to all of the above as Magna Carta protections because I see them as part of that living tradition. Peter Linebaugh's recent book, The "Magna Carta Manifesto," documents the meaning of the Magna Carta down through the centuries, prominent in that meaning being the tradition established by the Magna Carta that no man would be above the law, that no man would sit in judgment of himself, that no one would be tried or imprisoned without due process including judgment by a jury of peers. The Great Charter of Liberties was originally produced together with the Charter of the Forest, and these two documents were paired together for centuries before one of them was forgotten and the other was reinterpreted as the sacred text of private property, capitalism, God, and empire. The Charter of the Forest protects the rights of commoners to "commoning." That's a verb that encompasses the rights to use and maintain forests and wild places, to allow livestock to forage, and to gather wood, berries, mushrooms, and water. Linebaugh tells a global story of the loss of commons, of the enclosing of public spaces, of the creation of poverty and criminality, and of the Magna Carta as a manifesto against privatization. It strikes me as important right now that we recognize the power that the rule of law has had for good and its intimate ties to social as well as formal justice. Does Eric Holder -- do the rest of us -- want to oversee the demise of this tradition or its expansion and enhancement?
3. Equal Rights for All
We need, at long last, to place in our Constitution comprehensive equal rights for women, including the right to equal pay for equal work. We need comprehensive rights for all children, including the right to have their interests given primary consideration in public actions that concern them, and a ban on harmful child labor. We need a right to special care and assistance for mothers, fathers, and children, including paid maternal and family leave. We need these things much more than we need to hear anyone screaming about "family values"! And we need the Constitution to establish a right against any unfair discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual identity, language, religion or lack thereof, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, citizenship, or other status, including that of a migrant worker.
4. Environmental Rights
Our history is one of slowly expanding the group of people entitled to civil rights, breaking down barriers of wealth, race, sex, and age. But what about species? Although we've criminalized cruelty to animals in some cases, we've never dared to scandalize the philosophers by giving rights to nonhumans. I'm not proposing that we include dogs and pigs and insects in our Constitution as individuals. I don't think they have much more place there than do corporations, which have falsely claimed constitutional rights. But we might want to consider giving our environment as a whole a right to survive.
This right cannot be protected for young people any better than for old. We should have universal registration when people reach eighteen. If we can register everyone for the military draft, why can't we register everyone to vote?
There you have it. We've got rights, but they are threatened. They need restoration and enforcement. They also need expansion and updates. But that's not the half of it. There's also the matter of rights we ought to have that were never imagined by the creators of our Bill of Rights.
II. RIGHTS WE NEED
1. The Right to Vote
Proposing a right to vote only surprises people who believe we already have it. Perhaps the most important as well as the least controversial right that we could create is one that Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has long advocated for: the individual national right to vote (allowing the creation of national uniform standards for elections). I would add as well the right to directly elect the president, vice president, and all other elected officials, and to have one's vote publicly and locally counted in a manner that can be repeated and verified if questioned (effectively requiring hand-counted paper ballots), and the right to paid time off work to vote on election day, which would be made a national holiday or scheduled on a weekend. I would also propose establishing and enforcing serious criminal penalties for election fraud.
I think we should consider as well a less orthodox proposal, namely the right to be a candidate for elected office. Even if we all had the full and verifiable and unencumbered right to vote, our democracy would remain a weak one as long as only the extremely wealthy and those willing to take payments from the wealthy are able to credibly compete for elected office. We should have a right to know that the candidates in our elections are not corrupted by bribes (including the currently legal bribes we euphemistically call "contributions"), and the right to ourselves be candidates in more than a nominal sense unless prevented by something other than our wealth and income.
2. Right to Expanded Magna Carta Protections
We need to establish strict protection from arbitrary arrest, detention, exile, or enforced disappearance, and from all forms of slavery and forced labor, with criminal penalties for violators and compensation for victims. We need to strengthen our right against unreasonable search and seizure in this electronic age, amending the Constitution and/or replacing FISA with legislation that effectively protects us, creates criminal penalties for violators, and compensates victims. We should place in the Constitution new language to strictly ban all torture, all cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, rendition, medical or scientific experimentation on humans without their consent, and state executions. We should create criminal penalties for violators and compensation for victims.
We need to strengthen or create some additional rights for those who find themselves within our criminal justice system, including the right to presumption of innocence until proven guilty of a crime, the right to be told the charges against you at the time of your arrest, the right not to be detained without being arrested and charged, the right to obtain and to use in court a videotape of any relevant interrogations or confessions, the right of the accused to be detained separately from those already convicted, the right of juveniles to be detained separately from adults, the right not to be imprisoned for inability to fulfill a contract, the right to a penal system aimed at reformation and social rehabilitation, and the right to compensation for false conviction and punishment. The United States currently locks up a greater percentage of its citizens than any other nation, a heavy-handed and backward approach to social problems that mirrors our approach to foreign policy. Protecting innocents from the imprisonment onslaught and redirecting imprisonment to include rehabilitation, education, and preparation for civic participation are essential to undoing this damage.
I refer to all of the above as Magna Carta protections because I see them as part of that living tradition. Peter Linebaugh's recent book, The "Magna Carta Manifesto," documents the meaning of the Magna Carta down through the centuries, prominent in that meaning being the tradition established by the Magna Carta that no man would be above the law, that no man would sit in judgment of himself, that no one would be tried or imprisoned without due process including judgment by a jury of peers. The Great Charter of Liberties was originally produced together with the Charter of the Forest, and these two documents were paired together for centuries before one of them was forgotten and the other was reinterpreted as the sacred text of private property, capitalism, God, and empire. The Charter of the Forest protects the rights of commoners to "commoning." That's a verb that encompasses the rights to use and maintain forests and wild places, to allow livestock to forage, and to gather wood, berries, mushrooms, and water. Linebaugh tells a global story of the loss of commons, of the enclosing of public spaces, of the creation of poverty and criminality, and of the Magna Carta as a manifesto against privatization. It strikes me as important right now that we recognize the power that the rule of law has had for good and its intimate ties to social as well as formal justice. Does Eric Holder -- do the rest of us -- want to oversee the demise of this tradition or its expansion and enhancement?
3. Equal Rights for All
We need, at long last, to place in our Constitution comprehensive equal rights for women, including the right to equal pay for equal work. We need comprehensive rights for all children, including the right to have their interests given primary consideration in public actions that concern them, and a ban on harmful child labor. We need a right to special care and assistance for mothers, fathers, and children, including paid maternal and family leave. We need these things much more than we need to hear anyone screaming about "family values"! And we need the Constitution to establish a right against any unfair discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual identity, language, religion or lack thereof, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, citizenship, or other status, including that of a migrant worker.
4. Environmental Rights
Our history is one of slowly expanding the group of people entitled to civil rights, breaking down barriers of wealth, race, sex, and age. But what about species? Although we've criminalized cruelty to animals in some cases, we've never dared to scandalize the philosophers by giving rights to nonhumans. I'm not proposing that we include dogs and pigs and insects in our Constitution as individuals. I don't think they have much more place there than do corporations, which have falsely claimed constitutional rights. But we might want to consider giving our environment as a whole a right to survive.
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