The%20Importance%20of%20Individual%20Rights

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The Importance of Individual Rights The original
Constitution permitted slavery to continue it
did not secure the right of women to vote and it
provided no protection for religious freedom, not
to mention other rights. The framers of the
Constitution understood that it needed
amendments, and in fact it the Bill of Rightsthe
first ten amendmentswere necessary to convince
voters that they should adopt it. Other
amendments would follow later, and they would end
slavery and guarantee women the right to vote.
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• Did a slave who lived in a free state deserve his
  freedom?
• The Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court
  announced on March 6, 1857, that added fuel to
  the bitter sectional controversy over slavery and
  pushed the nation further along the road to civil
  war.
• The Supreme Court ruled that Blacks were not
  citizens and therefore could not sue in the
  federal courts A slave's residence on free soil
  did not make him a freeman upon his return to
  slave territory slaves were property and did not
  have rights but slaveholders were property owners
  and did have rights. The Thirteenth Amendment
  was necessary to end slavery in 1865.
• Source http//www.worldfreeinternet.net/news/nws1
  9.htm

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• Did women deserve the right to vote?
• The Fifteenth Amendment granted black men, but
  not black women, the right to vote in 1870,
  eighty-one years after the adoption of the
  Constitution.
• The Nineteenth Amendment finally granted women
  the right to vote in 1920, 131 years after the
  United States Constitution gave white men that
  right.
• When did Mexicans obtain the right to vote?

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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed
Mexicans the enjoyment of all the rights of
citizens, but state lawmakers and judges
frequently violated such stipulations, primarily
because the treaty made no explicit reference to
race. Article IX, included in Richard
Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo A Legacy of Conflict (Norman, OK
University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 190.
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• The legislatures of the ceded territory
  immediately curtailed the rights of a significant
  portion of the Mexican population by conferring
  constitutional rights only to white Mexicans, a
  stipulation the treaty never made.
• Thus, all the civilized Indians and afro-mestizos
  who had enjoyed the rights of Mexican citizenship
  were suddenly ineligible to vote, hold important
  offices, practice law, testify in court (in cases
  involving whites), and serve on juries.
• The U.S. Congress granted states these
  prerogatives in 1849. These restrictions on
  citizenship existed throughout the ceded
  territory and in Texas (whose sovereignty the
  treaty recognized). Martha Menchaca, Recovering
  History, Constructing Race The Indian, Black,
  and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Austin, TX
  University of Texas Press, 2001), 215-228.

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• As early as 1857, a California court forbade a
  Mexican landowner who signed the California
  constitution from testifying in court because of
  his Indian ancestry.
• The year before, the California Assembly had
  passed an anti-vagrancy ordinance informally
  known as the Greaser Act, which targeted people
  commonly known as Greasers or the issue of
  Spanish or Indian blood.
• In 1869, white businessmen in Santa Barbara
  contested the election of Pablo de la Guerra as
  district judge, arguing that he retained the
  character of a Mexican citizen. The California
  Supreme Court validated the citizenship of the
  defendant, but stipulated that the government
  could deny rights to non-white Mexicans.
• In Tucson in 1893, when white political opponents
  argued that Lucas Estrella, a city marshal, was
  not an American citizen. Estrella successfully
  deflected the attacks, but his political career
  soon ended.
• De la Guerra had also been a delegate in the
  constitutional convention and a state senator.
  Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing
  Race The Indian, Black, and White Roots of
  Mexican Americans (Austin, TX University of
  Texas Press, 2001),, 221-22.
• Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America The Chicano
  Struggle Toward Liberation (New York Harper
  Row, 1972), 117.
• Sheridan, Los Tucsonenses (Tucson
  University of Arizona Press, 1986), 118-19.

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• Texas district court finally established the
  legitimate right of Mexicans to American
  citizenship. It determined (In re Rodriguez,
  1897) that Mexicans indeed qualified, but their
  endorsement came with a distressing explanation.
  They based their decision on international
  treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, and added
  that the claimant was probably not white in the
  anthropological sense, which in this case meant
  that he did not look white.
• Ian F. Haney López, White by Law the Legal
  Construction of Race (New York New York
  University Press, 1996), 1-3, 5-9, 61, 203.

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• Can an INS officer search a person who looks
  Mexican?
• Although the Supreme Court has held that
  searches and seizures motivated entirely by
  Mexican appearance are unconstitutional, much INS
  activity has been held by federal courts to fall
  outside ______ Amendment scrutiny.
• Robert Alan Culp, The Immigration and
  Naturalization Service and Racially Motivated
  Questioning Does Equal Protection Pick up Where
  the Fourth Amendment Left off? Columbia Law
  Review, Vol. 86, No. 4. (May 1986), 801.

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• Miranda Rights
• In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the
  historic case of Miranda v. Arizona, declaring
  that whenever a person is taken into police
  custody, before being questioned he or she must
  be told of the _________ Amendment right not to
  make any self-incriminating statements. As a
  result of Miranda, anyone in police custody must
  be informed of his rights before being
  questioned
• You have the right to remain silent.
• Anything you say can and will be used against you
  in a court of law.
• You have the right to an attorney.
• If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be
  appointed for you.
• Source http//criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/crimina
  l_rights/your-rights-miranda/miranda.html

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• Ruiz v. Hull (Arizona, 1998)
• Elected officials, state employees and public
  school teachers brought action to challenge
  constitutionality of constitutional amendment
  requiring state and local governments to "act"
  only in English.
• The Supreme Court, ruled that the law violated
  the _________ Amendment and Equal Protection
  Clause of Fourteenth Amendment.
• Source http//www.languageandlaw.org/TEXTS/CASES/
  RUIZ.HTM

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• Pennsylvania, 2003
• A Hispanic man who spoke to his 5-year-old
  daughter in Spanish has been ordered to use
  primarily English around the girl as a condition
  of his visitation rights.
• "The principal form of communication during the
  periods of visitation is going to be English,"
  the judge said. "That does not mean that you
  can't instruct and teach her the Hispanic
  language.
• Does the judges order violate any amendments?
• Source http//www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.a
  spx?id12085

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• Kansas, 2005
• Junior Zach Rubio was suspended for one and a
  half days from Endeavor Alternative School in
  Kansas City for speaking Spanish, his father's
  native language. According to one Washington Post
  report, the teen says another boy asked him a
  question in Spanish in the school hallway during
  a bathroom break, and it only felt natural to
  Rubio to reply in the same language, which he
  did.
• A teacher who overheard the two students'
  exchange in Spanish sent Rubio to the office,
  where school principal Jennifer Watts ordered him
  to call his father and prepare to leave the
  campus. She says this was not the first time
  Rubio and other students had been told not to
  speak Spanish at school.
• Did the school violate any amendments?
• Source http//headlines.agapepress.org/archive/12
  /afa/142005c.asp

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• Compiled by Sal Acosta
• Other Sources
• http//www.pbs4549.org/constitution/ppvid3.htm
• http//www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/
  usam/title9/crm00121.htm
• Source Robert A. Goldwin, Why Blacks, Women, and
  Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and
  Other Unorthodox Views (Washington, D.C.
  American Enterprise Institute, 1990).
• Achievement, Discrimination, and Mexican
  Americans Samuel J. Surace Comparative Studies in
  Society and History, Vol. 24, No. 2. (Apr.,
  1982), pp. 315-339.
• Chicano Indianism A Historical Account of Racial
  Repression in the United States Martha Menchaca
  American Ethnologist, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Aug.,
  1993), pp. 583-603.