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Civil Liberties And Civil Rights

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Throughout history, society has pushed the envelope with civil liberties and civil rights by tackling Supreme Court decisions. The attempts to manipulate civil rights and civil liberties occurred without a clear understanding of neither of the two. While civil rights and civil liberties regulate collective action, they differ by providing freedoms from the government and by providing freedoms to act; their shift in history has been denoted by racial and gender discrimination, nationalization, and rights of the accused. Civil liberties, as denoted in the Bill of Rights, had limited the government’s actions by providing “freedoms from” the government. Because the government could not take away the people’s rights, the Bill of Rights listed “thou shalt nots,” which “limit[ed] its [the government’s] jurisdiction” (Lowi pg. 107). A famous substantive limitation, or a restriction against what Congress could do, was, and is, the establishment clause, or the separation between Church and State. As the first component of the First Amendment, the establishment clause impedes the government’s ability from establishing a national Church; consequently, due to religious persecution in England in the 1700’s, the establishment clause serves to protect the citizens from the possible tyranny of religion by permitting the accommodation of all religions through assistance and by not allowing the government to show “no favoritism”. Therefore, the United States refers to God on “U.S. currency”

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