Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute MCLI
Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute mission is to promote social change by increasing the recognition and use of existing human rights and peace law at the local, national, and international levels.
The goals are:
- To help individuals use human rights and peace law to enforce their civil rights and their right to peace, education, jobs, justice, and a healthly environment.
- To lecture, hold forums, and publish materials on United States and international human rights and humanitarian law, emphasizing the connection between civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights.
- To remain especially alert to human rights and to maintaining the physical and mental integrity of the most disadvantaged in the United States, including children tried and sentenced as adults, those who face the death penalty, and those facing distinctions based on race, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, and physical and mental disability.
- To offer internships that provide practical and multifaceted learning experience to college and law students and opportunties for volunteers to do meaningful work to assist activists, writers, and scholars.
- To develop innovative ways of using human rights law in new venues from city commissions to U.N. committees.
- To collect, index, archive, and make accessible the United States history of human rights and peace law that is not reported by traditional law services.
Human rights are the legal and written recognition of the dignity and equality of all persons. They are considered indivisible, inalienable, and universal. It is recognized that some may be compromised during periods of armed conflict and disturbance. Those rights that cannot be compromised are called "fundamental guarantees" or "nonderogable rights." Fundamental guarantees prohibit torture; cruel, human or degrading punishment or treatment; slavery, slave trade, or servitude; jail for those who cannot fulfill a contract without trial; and provide that all humans should have the freedom to choose their religion, thoughts, and belliefs (including to manifest these beliefs). Nations that have not adopted the death penalty include the right to life. Other conventions include freedom from retroactive laws and various guarantees for children and families. Civil liberties are those basic human rights that are protected by law against arbitrary interference particularly by governments. These fundamental individual rights include the right to life, freedom from torture, freedom from slavery and forced labor, the right to liberty and security, the right to a fair trial, the right to privacy, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to marry and have a family. These rights and liberties are usually created and protected by a constitution.
