In fact, those rights and freedoms are even more broad than those of many other countries simply because the U.S. Constitution specifically protects the rights and freedoms of all persons and not just of American citizens.
In many respects, the principal agent of beneficial change as far as the relative rights and freedoms of Americans are concerned is the U.S. Supreme Court. Over time, the most important issues affecting the rights and freedoms of persons in the U.S. are decided in cases that reach the Supreme Court either because lower courts cannot agree on the way to resolve important issues or because cases decided in lower courts are appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
In modern times, some of the most important Supreme Court decisions affecting the rights and freedoms of citizens were the decisions that were generated during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to that, African-American descendants of...
While the history of slavery and of racial persecution and inequality during the century after their emancipation certainly remains the most shameful part of U.S. history, the fact that all persons in the U.S. enjoy equal rights today is a testament to the degree that individual rights and freedoms have changed for the better in the U.S.
Sources Consulted
Edwards, G.C., Wallenberg, M.P., Lineberry, R.B. (2008). Government in America:
People, Politics, and Policy. New York: Longman.
Goldfield, D., Abbot, C., Argersinger, J., and Argersinger, P. (2005). Twentieth-Century
America: A Social and Political History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-
Prentice Hall.
