Sounds intriguing. Count me in.
Concerning the Articles of the Federation
- Thread starter Rush Limborg
- Start date
Well, as an amateur Constitutional scholar myself, I have a full list of the Twenty (conjectural) Guarantees Of Individual Rights. They are heavily based on the Amendments--not just the Bill of Rights, but the Voting Rights Amendments [15, 19, and 26] and the Civil Rights Amendment [14]. I also strove for consistency with the info from Memory Beta.
I also have my own Preamble to the Articles--but I broke from the norm of the UN Charter, and took material from the Declaration and the Preamble to the US Constitution--with some UN Charter stuff thrown in for good measure.
(In case you're wondering, I rationalized the screenshot from VOY as, "That's the preamble to the Charter, and that's only part of the Articles....")
(I also wrote this before I knew that Guarantee 12 had "sections", but I re-arranged the guarantees I listed to make it consistent with Tuvok's lines about artists, and therefore, patents.)
I'll probably revise them in time, as more info is revealed in TrekLit and canon. If you'd like to PM me, by all means, I'd love to send'em over!
Had a chance to glance at Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Considering the multi-species scale of the UFP, you may find clauses worth cribbing from.
Another good resource might be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No doubt this document would play a role in the formation of the Federation Charter.
Aaron McGuire
Aaron McGuire
^Well, most of those are basically "less generic" versions of the US Constitutional rights. They aren't really all that different.
(Some others, IMANSHO, are, quite frankly, the UN forcing things it has no business getting involved in. But that's a controversy for another day....)
(Some others, IMANSHO, are, quite frankly, the UN forcing things it has no business getting involved in. But that's a controversy for another day....)
I'm not sure that's accurate. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enumerates some important rights that the Constitution lacks or does not specifically enumerate, such as the right to privacy, a specific ban on torture, freedom of international travel, the right to seek asylum, the specific right to marry, the specific right of equal access to public services, the right to social security, the right to employment, the right to protection against unemployment, the right to favorable working conditions, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to just and favorable remuneration for work, the right to join and form a trade union, the right to rest and leisure (including limitations on working hours and paid holidays), and the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, the right to an education.
Some of those rights may be argued to exist by inference from the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution -- the right to join a trade union could be said to exist by inference in the U.S. Constitution's protection of the right to freedom of association -- but they are still there specifically in the UDHR while not being there in the U.S. Constitution.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms enumerates a universal right for all Canadian citizens to vote in democratic elections to the Canadian House of Commons; there is no equivalent universal right to suffrage in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution prevents states from discriminating on the basis of age, sex, failure to pay a poll tax, or race when it comes to suffrage, but leaves it to the states to determine suffrage. It only says, "the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature." That's why states can deny the right to vote to convicted felons, for instance.
The CCRF also specifically enumerates the right of Canadians to enter, remain in, or leave Canada, travel between the provinces, and the right to linguistic equality between English and French.
Again, some of these rights may be inferred to exist as a result of the U.S. Constitution, but they lack specific enumeration as in the CCRF.
And not a one of them -- Constitution of the United States of America, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- covers the rights of refugees the way Losing the Peace asserts the Articles of the Federation do, which I actually think is a fascinating and brilliant little idea of William Leisner's!
Edited to add:
For the record, at least part of the text of the Federation Charter has been canonically established:
"We the life forms of the United Federation of Planets determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in the fundamental rights of sentient beings, in the dignity and worth of all life forms, in the equal rights of members of planetary systems large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interstellar law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of living on all worlds..."
So any attempt to create the Articles needs to incorporate at least that much.
It's also important to remember that the Articles of the Federation would be as much about the mechanisms by which the Federation government functions -- qualifications for serving on the Federation Council, division of authority between the Federation and Member governments, etc. -- as it would be about the rights guaranteed to citizens and sentient beings. And it's also important to establish what the rights and legal statuses of, for instance, sentient non-humanoids that are not part of traditional polities, such as humpback whales (established as sentient in Star Trek IV), would be.
Examples of my second point. Practically all of that could be taken care of nicely by the free market, without force from the government. "Equal pay for equal work?" In a free market, you're payed what you're worth to the company--and the worker looks for the best-paying job for his/her services.
The "access to public services" thing is practically a given--a public service, by its very definition, means for the public, i.e. for everyone.
(And..."rights" to recreation (!), etc.?)
To claim that some (like employees), are entitled to rights at others' expense (in this case, employers), is, effectively, to favor one group over another.
If rights are not individual, i.e., if they do not apply to everyone equally, than, quite frankly, discrimination results. And such is the exact opposite of the theory behind "rights".
Maybe, maybe not. The idea behind enumerating them is to legally establish them as rights that are not subject to the whims of the free market: They are things to which you are entitled, period, even if the free market disagrees.
Yes. Surely someone who spends his free time talking on a message board about a TV series can understand the value and necessity of recreation to people so as to maintain their physical and mental health!
The U.S. Constitution claims that you are entitled to rights at others' expense -- you're entitled, for instance, to the right to a trial at the expense of the public.
And the UDHR is just that: universal. The employers are entitled to those same rights.
ETA:
But either way, you're missing the point. The point is not to say whether or not they should be considered rights (though this nicely illustrates the fact that even if we presume rights come from God, there is disagreement over which rights ought to be included). The point is simply that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are not just more generic versions of the U.S. Constitution's list of enumerated rights. They enumerate distinct rights that the U.S. Constitution lacks.
Also, for the record, the United Nations didn't force any damn thing down anyone's throats. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted at the best of the U.N. Secretary-General because the U.S. wanted it, its contents were the mutually-agreed-upon result of negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it was subject to a vote in the General Assembly in which Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela all voted for it, no states voting against it, and the Soviet Union and its vassal states abstained.
In short -- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exists because the United States wanted it to exist, and we voted for it when the Soviets abstained. It's as much a part of our American heritage as the Constitution.
In short -- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exists because the United States wanted it to exist, and we voted for it when the Soviets abstained. It's as much a part of our American heritage as the Constitution.
I know, but really. Even I would call it a privilege, not a right.
Good thing, too. But...there's something odd about them neglecting to tend to rebuke the constant violations commited by various dictatorships...and yet rebuke us for relatively minor alleged infractions....
(To wit: Why the heck are oppressive dictatorships on the UN Human Rights Board, when we're not?
)(I know: even more off topic. *sigh*)
How is something that you just conceded is necessary to ensure health a privilege rather than a right?
People aren't robots. You can't work them to death, and if you try, it won't work. People need leisure to survive. It is as much a right as air.
Good thing, too. But...there's something odd about them neglecting to tend to rebuke the constant violations commited by various dictatorships...and yet rebuke us for relatively minor alleged infractions....
(To wit: Why the heck are oppressive dictatorships on the UN Human Rights Board, when we're not?
That's a complaint that's related to modern developments at the United Nations. It has nothing to do with how the United Nations originally functioned in the 1940s, which is when the U.S. founded the U.N. and got it to proclaim the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And, for the record, that modern development you're complaining about is the inevitable result of the way we, the U.S., chose to set the U.N. up. We chose to set it up so that it would be a tool of its Member States rather than a government in its own right, meaning it would reflect the attitudes of a majority of its Members. And we set it up so that it would be a universal organization that all states, even dictatorships, could and would want to join.
Well, when you do that, that means that it's inevitable that the U.N. will reflect its membership. And if that means the majority of the world's states are pissed at you while at the same time it takes a majority of those states to kick someone else off a committee, then removal becomes a predictable consequence.
For the record, however, that particular criticism of the United Nations has been rectified: The United Nations Human Rights Council replaced the Human Rights Commission which had treated the U.S. unequally to dictatorships, and the United States is a member of the Human Rights Council (though the U.S. boycotted it during the Bush Administration -- even though it had been created specifically to rectify the stupidity of the Human Rights Commission).
As far as a right to recreation, well, the Declaration of Independence does list "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right, so there could be a legal basis.
With regards to dictatorships in the membership, we've seen at least one case in TNG where membership in the Federation was denied because of how they treated their people, so while they may not require Jeffersonian republican governments, they at least have some standards.
I suppose where that excerpt of the preamble left off is a good place to tack on, "do ordain and establish this constitution for the United Federation of Planets."
With regards to dictatorships in the membership, we've seen at least one case in TNG where membership in the Federation was denied because of how they treated their people, so while they may not require Jeffersonian republican governments, they at least have some standards.
I suppose where that excerpt of the preamble left off is a good place to tack on, "do ordain and establish this constitution for the United Federation of Planets."
Technically, though, the right is to the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself, per se.
Yeah, but, by your standards, Rush, even the pursuit of happiness ought to only be a privilege, not a right. After all, you don't need to pursue happiness to survive.
But if the pursuit of happiness is a right, then so ought to be the right to leisure -- or, as it should perhaps be put, the right to rest.
By my standards? Hardly.
The right, is to pursue leasure. Which means you have the right to look for and pic jobs that give employees times off. If the company feels you will benifit them, they will hire you--and you will get those off-days with the job.
Companies can, and should, give employees off time. It is in their best economic interests to do so--as this encourages more people to come to work at their company. The better the benefits, the more loyal the work force.
But the employees are not neccessarily entitled to having resort expenses paid for by the employers. My concern is, this is where the alleged "right to recreation" could very well lead--the government effectively forcing the companies into doing such-and-such, without regard for whether it results in the company going in the red.
Okay, so we can trust private entities to not exploit workers for their own ends, but we can't trust government not to exploit private entities for their own ends.
See, not protecting a "right to rest" could allow for things like slavery and indentured servitude, which have actually happened.
See, not protecting a "right to rest" could allow for things like slavery and indentured servitude, which have actually happened.
No, the right is to leisure itself. You know how it's a right? Because it's enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which we agreed to 60 years ago.
And if you only give people the right to leave a job that doesn't give them time off, all you've done is created a situation where people who desperately need a job are stuck working for a job that can legally deny them time off while giving the employee no legal options to protect themselves against that economic predation.
And, no, "you can quit" is not sufficient protection, because in the real world, sometimes you can't quit because you cannot afford to lose the job.
That's why there has to be a legal option to force companies to give time off if they're too stupid -- or too evil -- to recognize that time off is in their own economic self-interest.
And no one said they are, and having a right to leisure no more leads to that than a right to a trial by jury inherently leads to everyone being found not guilty.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the Federation constitution was formed by a society that has virtually unlimited energy, replicator technology, and highly advanced robotics. That changes the economic situation by several orders of magnitude.
So, where does Section 31 work into all this? Supposedly, they were established in the Federation Charter. Or was that Starfleet Charter? I think Enterprise provided some insight on this....
