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    Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States: Toward a More Equal Liberty
    John Shattuck and Mathias Risse. 10/8/2020. “Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States: Toward a More Equal Liberty.” Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, 2020-01. See full text.Abstract

    Americans today know they face threats to their rights, their democracy, their health and their economy. These threats are interrelated and demand a transformative response. Transformations have occurred at other pivotal moments in our nation’s history—at its founding during the American Revolution, its Reconstruction after the Civil War, its recovery from the Great Depression, its rise after World War II, and its reimagining during the Civil Rights Movement. Can today become a similar moment of transformation, turning threats into opportunities through the power of civic activism, voting, and government response? Can we reimagine the promise of rights that bind us together as a nation of diverse histories, identities, and lived experiences? 
     
    With the release of their nonpartisan, evidence-based report, Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, researchers at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights provide a guide for the nation wrestling with its values. This blueprint for protecting and expanding citizens’ rights proposes policy changes to strengthen democratic processes; safeguard equal protection, equal opportunity, and due process of law; and better protect freedoms of speech, media, religion and privacy. The Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities Project is directed by John Shattuck, Carr Center Senior Fellow and former US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. The report and the project are overseen by a faculty committee chaired by Carr Center Faculty Director Mathias Risse.
     
    The report offers an in-depth analysis of the state of rights in America in 2020, and then offers 80 recommendations to address failures to protect these rights. The Reimagining Rights team researched fifteen topics in five broad categories that are fundamental to protecting and expanding citizens’ rights. The Carr Center will continue to publish the fifteen reports in the coming months that expand upon specific rights domains in greater detail, including voting rights, money in politics, civic education, racial equality, women’s rights, and other areas of research. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our social media channels to stay up-to-date as we release each report.

    Read the Executive Summary.

     

    Read the Additional Reports: 

    1. Voting Rights
    2. Money in Politics
    3. Civic Education
    4. Racial Discrimination
    5. Women's Rights
    6. LGBTQ+ Rights
    7. Disability Rights
    8. Equal Access
    9. Immigration
    10. Criminal Justice & Public Safety
    11. Gun Rights & Public Safety
    12. Freedom of Speech & Media
    13. Religious Freedom
    14. Hate Crimes
    15. Privacy, Personal Data, and Surveillance
    Realizing Rights for Homeworkers: An Analysis of Governance Mechanisms.
    Marlese von Broembsen, Jenna Harvey, and Marty Chen. 3/5/2019. Realizing Rights for Homeworkers: An Analysis of Governance Mechanisms. . Carr Center Discussion Paper Series. 2019004th ed. Cambridge: Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. See full text.Abstract
    Realizing Rights for Homeworkers: An Analysis of Governance Mechanisms Carr Center Discussion Paper: 

    Following the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, the labour rights violations in global supply chains, and indeed the governance of global supply chains, has become a pressing global issue. This paper evaluates key existing global and national supply chain governance mechanisms from the perspective of the most vulnerable workers in supply chains—informal homeworkers.

    Read the full paper here: https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_004_realizing_rights.pdf

    Racial Discrimination
    John Shattuck and Mathias Risse. 12/8/2020. “Racial Discrimination.” Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, 2020-005. See full text.Abstract

    When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, his action honored a decades-long struggle by grassroots activists and dedicated political leaders to ensure national protection for racial equality. With the landmark agreement, Johnson fulfilled his promise, expressed in his first State of the Union speech earlier in the year, that “this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined”.  The historic legislation sought to eliminate racial discrimination on the federal level in broad categories including employment, education, voting, and public accommodations. The Civil Rights Act paved the way for other major federal laws outlawing discrimination in more targeted areas, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. 

    Over half a century later, the promises of the Civil Rights Act are threatened by sustained efforts to undermine its protections for equal rights and opportunities across racial identities.

    This issue of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series surveys the historical evolution and current status of racial discrimination within the U.S. in several key areas: criminal justice, housing, education, labor, and society at large. Next, it looks at the current status of discrimination within these five categories, including recent legislative and political efforts to weaken equal protection along racial lines. The authors provide recommendations to reinforce the government’s responsibility to uphold anti-discriminatory protections and restore individuals’ rights to equal access and protection. 

    Read the paper here.

    Check out other issues in our Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities Series. 

    Privacy, Personal Data, and Surveillance
    John Shattuck and Mathias Risse. 2/26/2021. “Privacy, Personal Data, and Surveillance.” Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, 016. See full text.Abstract

    Privacy has always been one of the most precarious rights of American life because it lacks clear protections in the U.S. Constitution. The right to privacy is under attack in this moment in our history like no other previous moment. Privacy defenders are attempting to fight a two-front war, as increasing incursions are made by private industry and government law enforcement.

    Read the paper. 

    See the full Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities Series.

    Partners in Crime: An Empirical Evaluation of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program
    Averell Schmidt and Kathryn Sikkink. 11/23/2018. “Partners in Crime: An Empirical Evaluation of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program.” Perspectives on Politics, 16, 4, Pp. 1014-1033. See full text.Abstract
    Article on : Partners in Crime: An Empirical Evaluation of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program

    In the years following the attacks of 9/11, the CIA adopted a program involving the capture, extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists in the war on terror. As the details of this program have become public, a heated debate has ensued, focusing narrowly on whether or not this program “worked” by disrupting terror plots and saving American lives. By embracing such a narrow view of the program’s efficacy, this debate has failed to take into account the broader consequences of the CIA program. We move beyond current debates by evaluating the impact of the CIA program on the human rights practices of other states. We show that collaboration in the CIA program is associated with a worsening in the human rights practices of authoritarian countries. This finding illustrates how states learn from and influence one another through covert security cooperation and the importance of democratic institutions in mitigating the adverse consequences of the CIA program. This finding also underscores why a broad perspective is critical when assessing the consequences of counterterrorism policies.

    New Report - Trump's First Year: How Resilient is Liberal Democracy in the US?
    John Shattuck, Amanda Watson, and Matthew McDole. 2/15/2018. New Report - Trump's First Year: How Resilient is Liberal Democracy in the US?. Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.Abstract
    Declining levels of political participation and public confidence in government in the US are not new, but the populist forces that propelled the election of Donald Trump in 2016 signaled a new level of public disillusionment with democratic politics as usual. There has been a sharp increase in public discontent with the system of governance in the US over the last fifteen years.

    A new report from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy examines the democratic checks and balances in the US, and measures their resiliency in the first year of the Trump administration, comparing US response to illiberal democracies worldwide. 

    Read the report.

    Money in Politics
    John Shattuck and Mathias Risse. 11/18/2020. “Money in Politics.” Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, 2020-003. See full text.Abstract

    As Yogi Berra once said, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” Nothing could be truer when it comes to money in American politics. In the 2000 election, candidates and outside groups spent a combined $3 billion on the presidential and congressional races. Not two decades later, in 2016, the amount spent more than doubled to a combined $6.5 billion. For 2020, forecasters project that the total amount spent on political advertising alone will reach $10 billion.

    There’s a simple reason for this exponential rise in political expenditures: the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment to preclude the regulation of many aspects of campaign finance. That decision in 1976 first opened the floodgates of contributions to political campaigns.

     

    "Nowhere is money felt more than in the explosion of spending by outside groups to elect and influence candidates in the past decade, which have simultaneously increased amounts while decreasing accountability."

     

    In this issue of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S. paper series, the authors outline how the bipartisan use of money in politics undermines the democratic process. 

    Read the full report.  

    See all the issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities paper series here. 

    LGBTQ Rights
    John Shattuck, Mathias Risse, and Timothy Patrick McCarthy. 1/6/2021. “LGBTQ Rights.” Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, 007. See full text.Abstract

    "Queer" people have always been here—since antiquity, they’ve lived across communities and intersections of every class, color, creed, condition, and country. Though not always marked as “deviant” or designated “illegal,” lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have also more often than not been victims of personal prejudice, social and cultural stigma, and legal and political discrimination. This has certainly been the case in the modern era, the same time that “human rights” has gained currency and frequency as a rallying cry for various struggles and peoples seeking freedom, equality, and justice. That’s is not a coincidence: as the formal infrastructure of human rights and state-sanctioned homophobia expanded simultaneously in the middle of the 20th century, so, too, did the modern movement for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States first emerge. This “paradox of progress”—the persistent battle between progress and prejudice—is a key characteristic of the history of social justice movements, including those for queer liberation and rights.

    Read the full paper.

    See the full Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series here. 

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