Bill of rights in the context of "Entrenched clause"

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (French: Charte canadienne des droits et libertés), often simply referred to as the Charter in Canada, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Charter guarantees certain political rights to Canadian citizens and guarantees the civil rights of everyone in Canada. It is designed to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody those rights. The Charter was proclaimed in force by Queen Elizabeth II of Canada on April 17, 1982, as part of the Constitution Act, 1982.

The Charter was preceded by the Canadian Bill of Rights, enacted in 1960, which was a federal statute rather than a constitutional document. The Bill of Rights exemplified an international trend towards formalizing human rights protections following the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instigated by the country's movement for human rights and freedoms that emerged after World War II. As a federal statute, the Bill of Rights could be amended through the ordinary legislative process and had no application to provincial laws. The Supreme Court of Canada also narrowly interpreted the Bill of Rights, showing reluctance to declare laws inoperative. Between 1960 and 1982, only five of the thirty-five cases concerning the Bill of Rights that were heard by the Supreme Court of Canada resulted in a successful outcome for claimants. The relative ineffectiveness of the Canadian Bill of Rights motivated many to improve rights protections in Canada. The British Parliament formally enacted the Charter as a part of the Canada Act 1982 at the request of the Parliament of Canada in 1982, the result of the efforts of the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

The Jones–Shafroth Act (Pub. L. 64–368, 39 Stat. 951, enacted March 2, 1917), officially called the Organic Act of Puerto Rico or the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1917, is an organic act of the 64th United States Congress that was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on March 2, 1917. The Act expanded the civil administration of the insular government of Puerto Rico, which was established under the federal jurisdiction of the United States as the local governance of an unincorporated territory through the Foraker Act of 1900. It served as the primary organic law for the government of Puerto Rico and its relation with the United States until it was superseded by the Constitution of Puerto Rico in 1952 as per the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950 and its Pub. L. 82–447 joint resolution.

Bearing the names of its sponsors, Representative William Atkinson Jones, (D-Virginia), chairman of the House Committee on Insular Affairs, and Senator John Shafroth, (D-Colorado), chairman of the Committee on Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico, the Jones–Shafroth Act, which operated as a de facto constitution, established a bill of rights based on the United States Bill of Rights and granted statutory birthright United States citizenship to anyone born in the archipelago and island on or after April 11, 1899.

The International Bill of Human Rights was the name given to UN General Assembly Resolution 217 (III) and two international treaties established by the United Nations. It consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in 1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966) with its two Optional Protocols and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966). The two covenants entered into force in 1976, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified them.

In the beginning, different views were expressed about the form the bill of rights should take. In 1948, General Assembly planned the bill to include UDHR, one Covenant and measures of implementation. The Drafting Committee decided to prepare two documents: one in the form of a declaration, which would set forth general principles or standards of human rights; the other in the form of a convention, which would define specific rights and their limitations.

Tyranny of the majority refers to a situation in majority rule where the preferences and interests of the majority dominate the political landscape, potentially sidelining or repressing minority groups and using majority rule to take non-democratic actions. This idea has been discussed by various thinkers, including John Stuart Mill in On Liberty and Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.

To reduce the risk of majority tyranny, modern democracies frequently have countermajoritarian institutions that restrict the ability of majorities to repress minorities and stymie political competition. In the context of a nation, constitutional limits on the powers of a legislative body such as a bill of rights or supermajority clause have been used. Separation of powers or judicial independence may also be implemented.

The Canadian Bill of Rights (French: Déclaration canadienne des droits) is a federal statute and bill of rights enacted by the Parliament of Canada on August 10, 1960. It provides Canadians with certain rights at Canadian federal law in relation to other federal statutes. It was the earliest expression of human rights law at the federal level in Canada, though an implied Bill of Rights had already been recognized in the Canadian common law.

The Canadian Bill of Rights remains in effect but is widely acknowledged to be limited in its effectiveness because it is a federal statute only, and so not directly applicable to provincial laws. These legal and constitutional limitations were a significant reason that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was established as an unambiguously-constitutional-level Bill of Rights for all Canadians, governing the application of both federal and provincial law in Canada, with the patriation of the Constitution of Canada in 1982. Since patriation, its usefulness at federal law in Canada is mostly limited to issues pertaining to the enjoyment of property, as set forth in its section 1(a)]—a slightly-broader "life, liberty, and security of the person" right than is recognized in section seven of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the fundamental governing document of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 individual states that make up the United States of America. It consists of a preamble, declaration of rights, description of the principles and framework of government, and articles of amendment.

Created by the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1779, the document was primarily authored by American founding father and future president John Adams. Following its approval by convention delegates, it was approved by voters on June 15, 1780, and became effective October 25 of that year.

The implied bill of rights (French: déclaration des droits implicite) is a theory in Canadian jurisprudence which proposed that as a consequence of the British North America Act, certain important civil liberties could not be abrogated by the government. The significance of an implied bill of rights has decreased since the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, an entrenched written bill of rights, but remains important for understanding the evolution of Canadian human rights law and the Constitution of Canada. In the 1938 decision of Reference Re Alberta Statutes, a concurring opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada first proposed an implied bill of rights.

The rights and freedoms that are protected under the Charter, including the rights to freedom of speech, habeas corpus, and the presumption of innocence, have their roots in a set of Canadian laws and legal precedents related to "implied rights". Although implemented in judiciary law and part of required reading in Canadian law schools, the theory was never codified either in legislation or in the constitution by the majority in the Supreme Court of Canada. Prior to the advent of the Canadian Bill of Rights in 1960 and its successor the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, the laws of Canada did not provide much in the way of civil rights and it was typically of limited concern to the courts.

The Constitution of the Philippines (Filipino: Saligang Batas ng Pilipinas or Konstitusyon ng Pilipinas) is the supreme law of the Philippines. Its final draft was completed by the Constitutional Commission on October 12, 1986, and ratified by a nationwide plebiscite on February 2, 1987. The Constitution remains unamended to this day.

The Constitution consists of a preamble and eighteen articles. It mandates a democratic and republican form of government and includes a bill of rights that guarantees entrenched freedoms and protections against governmental overreach. The Constitution also organizes the main branches of the Philippine government: a legislative department known as the Congress, which consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives; an executive department headed by a president; and a judicial department, which includes the Supreme Court and lower courts. It also establishes three independent constitutional commissions—Civil Service Commission (CSC), the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), and the Commission on Audit (COA)—each enjoying fiscal autonomy. Other governmental bodies created under the Constitution include the Commission on Appointments (CA), the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).