Question

Write an introductory paragraph for your email that explains why rights are not absolute. Include how the Constitution safeguards and limits individual rights.

Answer 1

Heaven knows what "absolute" means, but there are two well-recognized qualifications to the nature of a civil right that may be of use to you:

(1) Conflict between individuals, or between an individual and everybody else. Two individuals may each have a right which, willy nilly, conflict. This is often phrased colorfully as "my right to swing my fist ends at your nose" or "free speech doesn't include the right to (falsely) shout 'Fire!' in a crowded movie theater." That is, for example, my right to life cannot overrule your right to life. If someone tells me to kill you, or else he will kill me, I do NOT have the right to kill you to preserve my own life. Our rights to life conflict. Similarly, you cannot exercise your right to free speech by loudly calling for my lynching -- your right to free speech collides with my right to life. If I am a witness to a crime in which you are accused, I may not exercise my right of free speech to discuss the case with one of the jurors, who happens to be my neighbor -- your right to an impartial trial by your peers conflcts with my right to free speech.

I'm sure you can think of many more cases. but the general theme is that when rights exercised by one person would necessarily conflict with rights exercised by another, then there is some boundary line that needs to be drawn. Courts generally draw it when it isn't plain to common sense, and over time, their decisions have the weight of law. The most complicated such cases end up in front of the Supreme Court.

By the way, keep in mind sometimes the rights exercised by one party may be rights exercised by the people in general, not any one person. For example, the right of a felon convicted of murder to own a gun, guaranteed by the Second Amendment, may be abrogated not because him owning a gun threatens any one particular individual's right to life (like a witness against him at his trial), but because the court considers him owning a gun to conflict with everyone's right to life -- with the right of people in general to be free of violent threats to their life.

(2) Time, place and manner restrictions. Only in a few situations are rights things that have to be exercised always and everywhere to have meaning, such as your right to life. Your right to free speech, to assemble (protest and march) and petittion the government, your right to vote, your right to travel freely, your right to a speedy trial by a jury of your peers -- these are all things that can be given fully equivalent expression even if the exact time and manner in which they occur isn't your own personal free choice. These are often called "time, place and manner" restrictions on your rights.

For example, let us suppose you want to hold up a big sign at an Obama campaign rally questioning what happened in Benghazi. You have a right to do so -- that is political speech, strongly protected by the First Amendment. But on the other hand, while YOU may prefer to stick the sign squarely between the President and the nearest TV camera, for maximum exposure and to maximally annoy the President, the courts are likely to think that it isn't necessary to allow you to be so obnoxious, and get in the way of other people who want to hear the President speak. The courts will probably decide that if the President's campaign wants to restrict you to holding the sign up in a little pen at the side of his rally, so that the TV cameras occasionally see you, but you aren't in the President's face, that this is an adequate opportunity for you to express your right to free speech.

Similarly, a public university must allow you to express your political opinions by, for example, wearing an Obama/Biden T-shirt to class, but they can certainly prohibit you from carrying a boom box that plays their campaign song at maximum volume during a class. Your right to expression is not unduly cramped by being restricted as to the place in which you exercise it, or the manner.

If you are accused of a crime, the state must provide you with a speedy trial. But that doesn't meant it has to take place instantly, or in a way that would tremendously inconvenience witnesses, the judge, juurors. If it's delayed for some months, for example, while judges and jurors cope with other cases, the courts will likely consider that adjustment to the time and manner of your right being fulfilled as reasonable.

In this case, too, courts decide appropriate and inappropriate time, place and manner restrictions on civil rights, and, over time, they acquire the weight of law. As you might imagine, deciding these cases involves a whole lot of delicate balancing acts, of the public's right to not be inconvenienced, or the taxpayer's right to reasonable expense, versus and individual's rights. This is how federal judges earn their salaries.