The freedom to choose our rights

Is the American ideal our culture or our Constitution?

Is our refusal to sign on to economic and social international human rights agreements a result of our cultural norms or our Constitutional bounds?

How many times have you heard the horror stories of human rights violations? Ever wondered why the U.S. doesn't sign on to international human rights treaties? WWS Professor Stanley N. Katz explained the position of the U.S. on human rights treaties at the second annual Walter F. Murphy Lecture in American Constitution-alism presented by the James Madison Program Feb. 28. We don't sign on because it goes against the American ideal — including our Constitution.

The U.S. has signed on to some of the human rights treaties written after WWII — most accepted recently, in the 1980s and after — but there are some human rights Professor Katz said the U.S. would most likely never guarantee. These are economic, cultural and social human rights, such as free housing or guaranteed jobs.

To many Americans, guaranteed rights to housing, medical care and other 'positive' liberties smack of socialism. Our famous American liberty is instead our 'negative' liberty from government intervention in our free speech, free press, etc. Our cultural repulsion to positive liberties is not just cultural, but embedded into our governmental theory.

The philosophy of the Constitution is that it grants only certain, enumerated powers to the government. The other powers are retained by the people. In fact, as scholars of constitutional theory recall, there was much debate over the addition of specific enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights because of fear that the people might forget that those rights were already theirs — along with all the other powers not granted to the government. It is this idea of limited, enumerated powers that keeps our government from signing on to human rights treaties. Such treaties would require governmental enforcement through powers that were not granted by the Constitution.

.....If, for example, America signed a treaty guaranteeing every human the right to a good job, then the implication would follow that the government has the power to regulate the hiring and firing of employees. In our capitalistic, free-market system, the government does not have that power. In effect, it does not have the authority to agree to certain human rights treaties. This is the beauty of the American experiment and should not be considered restrictive. Rather, it is freeing to all views by refusing to allow the government to hem the nation into any one view.

Signing on to certain human rights treaties would require our government to guarantee that our country follow a certain pattern. In fact, we have the freedom to choose to follow that pattern or not, and the government was not constitutionally granted the power to take away that choice. Thus, it is our Constitution that keeps America from officially signing on to international human rights treaties.

Notably, nothing keeps individuals from voluntarily upholding those human rights in their own choices. Lindsay Grinols is from Champaign, IL. She can be reached at lgrinols@princeton.edu.