Our 100 Human Rights: How We Can Exercise Them and Get Them Enforced

By Ann Fagan Ginger, NLG member since 1946

After being asked by several Bay Area law schools, colleges, and NGOs to present summaries of current U.S. human rights law, I decided to prepare a book describing all of the human rights of everyone in the U.S. today. Several NLG members have helped me. Publication date: May Day 2017.

The unique feature of the book: for each human right — from HR 1 The right to life: not to be shot by the police, to HR 100 The right to exercise our rights using new tactics when possible — there is a description of someone exercising the right, the U.S. law in the Bill of Rights, U.S. statutes and court opinions, AND the law in the U.N. Charter and in three U.N. human rights treaties the U.S. has ratified, in the ratified Organization of American States treaty, and in three U.N. treaties the U.S. has signed but not yet ratified.

Guild lawyers, law professors, and law students will find it very helpful to cite the language in these treaties that are “the supreme law of the land,” to be enforced by every U.S. government body — local, state, and federal, although few judges know this until you cite Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980), explicitly upholding this.

It turns out many lawyers have won some points in their cases by citing the U.N. Charter, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Convention against Torture, which are much more specific than the first Ten Amendments.

Sections of the book include:

• Basic Little-Known Human Rights
• Personal Rights
• Political Rights
• Economic and Social Rights
• Rights of Workers
• Rights of Women
• Rights of Youths and Children
• Rights of African Americans
• Rights of Native Americans
• Rights of Latinos
• Right of Asian-Americans, Muslims, Pacific Islanders, and all immigrants
• Rights of Veterans
• Right of LGBTQs
• Right of Seniors
• Rights of the Sick and Disabled
• Rights of Prisoners
• Basic Rights of Everyone

NOTE: If you have time now to check some citations, please contact me at annfginger@gmail.com

Photo: Ann Fagan Ginger at the 2016 Law for the People Convention. (Shanna Merola)