liberty

liberty, a state of freedom, especially as opposed to political subjection, imprisonment, or slavery. Its two most generally recognized divisions are political and civil liberty.

Civil liberty is the absence of arbitrary restraint and the assurance of a body of rights, such as those found in bills of rights, in statutes, and in judicial decisions. Such liberty, however, is not inconsistent with regulations and restrictions imposed by law for the common good. Political liberty consists of the right of individuals to participate in government by voting and by holding public office. Since the proletarian and socialist movements and the economic dislocations after World War I, liberty has been increasingly defined in terms of economic opportunity and security. In Anglo-American countries liberty has often been identified with constitutional government, political democracy, and the orderly administration of common-law systems.

In a more particular sense, a liberty is the term for a franchise, a privilege, or branch of the crown’s prerogative granted to a subject, as, for example, that of executing legal process. These liberties are exempt from the jurisdiction of the sheriff and have separate commissions of the peace. In the United States a franchise is a privilege, the term liberty not being used in such cases. The concept of liberty as a body of specific rights found in English and U.S. constitutional law contrasts with the abstract or general liberty enunciated during the French Revolution and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. However, modern liberty involves, in theory, both the support of specific rights of the individual, such as civil and political liberty, and the guarantee of the general welfare through democratically enacted social legislation.