Bill of rights

"Bill of Rights" redirects here. For the English law, see Bill of Rights 1689. For the United States constitutional amendments, see United States Bill of Rights.

A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or unentrenched. An entrenched bill of rights cannot be modified or repealed by a country's legislature through normal procedure, instead requiring a supermajority or referendum; often it is part of a country's constitution and therefore subject to special procedures applicable to constitutional amendments. An unentrenched bill of rights is a normal statute law and as such can be modified or repealed by the legislature at will. In practice, not every jurisdiction enforces the protection of the rights articulated in its bill of rights.

Australia is the only Western country with neither a constitutional nor legislative bill of rights, although there is ongoing debate in many of Australia's states. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has argued against a bill of rights for Australia as transferring power from elected politicians to unelected judges and bureaucrats. Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) are the only regions of the nation's states to have a human rights bill.

List of bills of rights

• Magna Carta (1215; England)
• Golden Bull of 1222 (1222; Hungary)
• Statute of Kalisz (1264; Kingdom of Poland) Jewish residents' rights
• Dušan's Code (1349; Serbia)
• Twelve Articles (1525; Germany)
• Pacta conventa (1573; Poland)
• Henrician Articles (1573; Poland)
• Petition of Right (1628; England)
• Bill of Rights 1689 (England) and Claim of Right Act 1689 (Scotland) This applied to all British Colonies of the time, and was later entrenched in the laws of those colonies that became nations - for instance in Australia with the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 and reconfirmed by the Statute of Westminster 1931
• Virginia Bill of Rights (June 1776)
• Preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence (July 1776)
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; France)
• Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution (completed in 1789, ratified in 1791)
• Constitution of Greece (1822; Epidaurus)
• Hatt-ı Hümayun (1856; Ottoman Empire)
• Basic rights and liberties in Finland (1919)^{[citation needed]}
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
• Fundamental rights and duties of citizens in People's Republic of China (1949)
• European Convention on Human Rights (1950)
• Fundamental Rights of Indian citizens (1950)
• Implied Bill of Rights (a theory in Canadian constitutional law)
• Canadian Bill of Rights (1960)
• Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982)
• Article III of the Constitution of the Philippines (1987)
• Article 5 of the Constitution of Brazil (1988)
• New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990)
• Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms of the Czech Republic (1991)
• Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (1991)
• Chapter 2 of the Constitution of South Africa (entitled "Bill of Rights") (1996)
• Human Rights Act 1998 (United Kingdom)
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2005)

See also

• Bill of Rights Defense Committee
• British Bill of Rights
• Civil rights
• Constitution of South Korea
• Human rights
• Inalienable rights
• Natural rights
• Rule of law
• International human rights instruments

External links

• "A New British Bill of Rights: The Case For". Industrial Systems Research. http://industry.books.officelive.com/billrights.aspx. 
• Human Rights Act for Australia, Amnesty International Australiaqz:rigts to america