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UNALIENABLE.
The state of a thing or right which cannot
be sold.
"Unalienable: incapable of being
alienated, that is, sold and transferred." Black's Law Dictionary,
Sixth Edition, page 1523:
You can not surrender, sell or transfer unalienable rights, they are a
gift from the creator to the individual and can not under any
circumstances be surrendered or taken. All individual's have
unalienable rights.
Inalienable rights:
Rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred
without the consent of the one possessing such rights. Morrison v.
State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101.
You can surrender, sell or transfer inalienable rights if you consent
either actually or constructively. Inalienable rights are not inherent
in man and can be alienated by government. Persons have inalienable
rights. Most state constitutions recognize only inalienable rights.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form
of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness. DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE
Men are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights,-'life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness;' and to
'secure,' not grant or create,
these rights, governments are instituted. That property which a man
has honestly acquired he retains full control of, subject to these
limitations: First, that he shall not use it to his neighbor's injury,
and that does not mean that he must use it for his neighbor's benefit;
second, that if the devotes it to a public use, he gives to the public
a right to control that use; and third, that whenever the public needs
require, the public may take it upon payment of due compensation.
BUDD v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF NEW YORK, 143 U.S. 517 (1892)
Among these unalienable rights,
as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to pursue
their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any lawful
business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal
rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their
faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment. The common
business and callings of life, the ordinary trades and pursuits, which
are innocuous in themselves, and have been followed in all communities
from time immemorial, must therefore be free in this country to all
alike upon the same conditions. The right to pursue them, without let
or hinderance, except that which is applied to all persons of the same
age, sex, and condition, is a distinguishing privilege of citizens of
the United States, and an essential element of that freedom which they
claim as their birthright. It has been well said that 'THE PROPERTY
WHICH EVERY MAN HAS IN HIS OWN LABOR,
AS IT IS THE ORIGINAL FOUNDATION OF ALL OTHER PROPERTY, SO IT IS THE
MOST SACRED AND INVIOLABLE. The patrimony of the poor man lies in the
strength and dexterity of his own hands, and to hinder his employing
this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without
injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred
property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of
the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. . . The
right to follow any of the common occupations of life is an
inalienable right, it was formulated as such under the phrase 'pursuit
of happiness' in the declaration of independence, which commenced with
the fundamental proposition that 'all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This
right is a large ingredient in the civil liberty of the citizen. To
deny it to all but a few favored individuals, by investing the latter
with a monopoly, is to invade one of the fundamental privileges of the
citizen, contrary not only to common right, but, as I think, to the
express words of the constitution. It is what no legislature has a
right to do; and no contract to that end can be binding on subsequent
legislatures. . . BUTCHERS' UNION CO. v. CRESCENT CITY CO., 111
U.S. 746 (1884)
"Burlamaqui (Politic c. #, . 15) defines natural liberty as
"the right which nature gives to all mankind of disposing of their
persons and property after the manner they may judge most consonant to
their happiness, on condition of their acting within the limits of the
law of nature, and so as not to interfere with an equal exercise of
the same rights by other men;" and therefore it has been justly said,
that "absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of
personal security--the right of personal liberty--and the right to
acquire and enjoy property. These rights have been justly considered
and frequently declared by the people of this country to be
natural, inherent, and unalienable."
Potter's Dwarris, ch. 13, p. 429.
From these passages it is evident; that the right of acquiring and
possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural,
inherent, and unalienable rights of man. Men have a sense of property:
Property is necessary to their subsistence, and correspondent to their
natural wants and desires; its security was one of the objects, that
induced them to unite in society. No man would become a member of a
community, in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labour
and industry. . . The constitution expressly declares, that the right
of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property is natural,
inherent, and unalienable. It is
a right not ex gratia from the legislature, but ex debito from the
constitution. . . Where is the security, where the inviolability of
property, if the legislature, by a private act, affecting particular
persons ONLY, can take land from one citizen, who acquired it legally,
and vest it in another? VANHORNE'S LESSEE v. DORRANCE, 2 U.S. 304
(1795)
("[T]he Due Process Clause protects [the
unalienable liberty recognized in the Declaration of
Independence] rather than the particular rights or privileges
conferred by specific laws or regulations." SANDIN v. CONNER, ___
U.S. ___ (1995)
In the second article of the Declaration of Rights, which was made
part of the late Constitution of Pennsylvania, it is declared: 'That
all men have a natural and unalienable
right to worship Almighty God, according to the dictates of their own
consciences and understanding; and that no man ought or of right can
be compelled, to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any
place of worship, or maintain any ministry, contrary to, or against,
his own free will and consent; nor can any man, who acknowledges the
being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a
citizen, on account of his religious sentiments, or peculiar mode of
religious worship; and that no authority can, or ought to be, vested
in, or assumed, by any power whatever, that shall, in any case,
interfere with, or in any manner controul, the right of conscience in
the free exercise of religious worship.' (Dec. of Rights, Art. 2.). .
. (The Judge then read the 1st. 8th. and 11th articles of the
Declaration of Rights; and the 9th. and 46th sections of
the Constitution of Pennsylvania. See 1 Vol. Dall. Edit. Penn. Laws p.
55. 6. 60. in the Appendix.) From these passages it is evident; that
the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it
protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and
unalienable rights of man. Men have
a sense of property: Property is necessary to their subsistence, and
correspondent to their natural wants and desires; its security was one
of the objects, that induced them to unite in society. No man would
become a member of a community, in which he could not enjoy the fruits
of his honest labour and industry. The preservation of property then
is a primary object of the social compact, and, by the late
Constitution of Pennsylvania, was made a
fundamental law. . . The constitution expressly declares,
that the right of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property is
natural, inherent, and unalienable.
It is a right not ex gratia from the legislature, but ex debito from
the constitution. VANHORNE'S LESSEE v. DORRANCE, 2 U.S. 304 (1795)
I had thought it self-evident that all men were endowed by their
Creator with liberty as one of the cardinal
unalienable rights. It is that
basic freedom which the Due Process Clause protects, rather than the
particular rights or privileges conferred by specific laws or
regulations. . . It demeans the holding in Morrissey - more
importantly it demeans the concept of liberty itself - to ascribe to
that holding nothing more than a protection of an interest that the
State has created through its own prison regulations. For if the
inmate's protected liberty interests are no greater than the State
chooses to allow, he is really little more than the slave described in
the 19th century cases. I think it clear that even the inmate retains
an unalienable interest in
liberty - at the very minimum the right to be treated with dignity -
which the Constitution may never ignore. MEACHUM v. FANO, 427 U.S.
215 (1976)
All commissions (regardless of their form, or by whom issued) contain,
impliedly, the constitutional reservation, that the people at any time
have the right, through their representatives, to alter, reform, or
abolish the office, as they may alter, if they choose, the whole form
of government. In our magna charta it is proclaimed (2d section of the
Bill of Rights, under the 9th Article of the Constitution
of Pennsylvania), that 'all power is inherent in the people, and all
free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for
their peace, safety, and happiness; for the advancement of these ends
they have at all times an unalienable
and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish their government,
in such manner as they may think proper.' It has been well said, by
one of the ablest judges of the age, that 'a constitution is not to
receive a technical construction, like a common law instrument or a
statute. It is to be interpreted so as to carry out the great
principles of the government, not to defeat them.' Per Gibson, C. J.,
in Commonwealth v. Clark, 7 Watts & S. (Pa.), 133. BUTLER v. COM.
OF PENNSYLVANIA, 51 U.S. 402 (1850)
The rights of life and personal liberty are natural rights of man. 'To
secure these rights,' says the Declaration of Independence,
'governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed.' The very highest duty of the States,
when they entered into the Union under the Constitution, was to
protect all persons within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these
'unalienable rights with which
they were endowed by their Creator.' Sovereignty, for this purpose,
rests alone with the States. It is no more the duty or within the
power of the United States to punish for a conspiracy to falsely
imprison or murder within a State, than it would be to punish for
false imprisonment or murder itself. U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542
(1875)
". . . The question presented is not whether the United States has the
power to condemn and appropriate this property of the Monongahela
Company, for that is conceded, but how much it must pay as
compensation therefor. Obviously, this question, as all others which
run along the line of the extent of the protection the individual has
under the Constitution against the demands of the government, is of
importance; for in any society the fulness and sufficiency of the
securities which surround the individual in the use and enjoyment of
his property constitute one of the most certain tests of the character
and value of the government. The first ten amendments to the
Constitution, adopted as they were soon after the adoption of the
Constitution, are in the nature of a bill of rights, and were adopted
in order to quiet the apprehension of many, that without some such
declaration of rights the government would assume, and might be held
to possess, the power to trespass upon those rights of persons and
property which by the Declaration of Independence were affirmed to be
unalienable rights. UNITED
STATES v. TWIN CITY POWER CO., 350 U.S. 222 (1956)
'By the common law, the king as parens patriae owned the soil under
all the waters of all navigable rivers or arms of the sea where the
tide regularly ebbs and flows, including the shore or bank to high-
water mark. ... He held these rights, not for his own benefit, but for
the benefit of his subjects at large, who were entitled to the free
use of the sea, and all tide waters, for the purposes of navigation,
fishing, etc., subject to such regulations and restrictions as the
crown or the Parliament might prescribe. By Magna Charta, and many
subsequent statutes, the powers of the king are limited, and he cannot
now deprive his subjects of these rights by granting the public
navigable waters to individuals. But there can be no doubt of the
right of Parliament in England, or the Legislature of this state, to
make such grants, when they do not interfere with the vested rights of
particular individuals. The right to navigate the public waters of the
state and to fish therein, and the right to use the public highways,
are all public rights belonging to the people at large. They are not
the private unalienable rights
of each individual. Hence the Legislature as the representatives of
the public may restrict and regulate the exercise of those rights in
such manner as may be deemed most beneficial to the public at large:
Provided they do not interfere with vested rights which have been
granted to individuals.' APPLEBY v. CITY OF NEW YORK, 271 U.S. 364
(1926)
I Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution (1876) 319 et seq. In
ratifying the Constitution the following
declarations were made: New Hampshire, p. 326, 'XI. Congress shall
make no laws touching religion, or to infringe the rights of
conscience.' Virginia, p. 327, '... no right, of any denomination, can
be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified, by the Congress, by
the Senate or House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the
President, or any department or officer of the United States, except
in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for
those purposes; and that among other essential rights, the liberty of
conscience, and of the press, cannot be cancelled, abridged,
restrained, or modified, by any authority of the United States.' New
York, p. 328, 'That the freedom of the press ought not to be violated
or restrained.' After the submission of the amendments, Rhode Island
ratified and declared, pp. 334, 335, 'IV. That religion, or the duty
which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be
directed only by reason and conviction, and not by force and violence;
and therefore all men have a natural, equal, and
unalienable right to the exercise
of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that no
particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or
established, by law, in preference to others. ... XVI. That the people
have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing and publishing their
sentiments. That freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks
of liberty, and ought not to be violated.' JONES v. CITY OF
OPELIKA, 319 U.S. 105 (1943)
As to the objections made on the other side to our interpretation of
the compact, that it impugns the right to the pursuit of happiness,
which is inherent in every society of men, and is incompatible with
these unalienable rights of
sovereignty and of self-government, which every independent State must
possess, the answer is obvious: that no people has a right to pursue
its own happiness to the injury of others, for whose protection solemn
compacts, like the present, have been made. It is a trite maxim, that
man gives up a part of his natural liberty when he enters into civil
society, as the price of the blessings of that state: and it may be
said, with truth, this liberty is well exchanged for the advantages
which flow from law and justice. GREEN v. BIDDLE, 21 U.S. 1 (1821)
This court said, in the case of The Bank of Columbia v. Okely (4
Wheat. 235), in speaking of a summary proceeding given by the charter
of that bank for the collection of its debts: 'It is the remedy, and
not the right, and as such we have no doubt of its being subject to
the will of Congress. The forms of administering justice, and the
duties and powers of courts as incident to the exercise of a branch of
sovereign power, must ever be subject to legislative will, and the
power over them is unalienable,
so as to bind subsequent legislatures.' And in Young v. The Bank of
Alexandria (4 Cranch, 397), Mr. Chief Justice Marshall says: 'There is
a difference between those rights on which the validity of the
transactions of the corporation depends, which must adhere to those
transactions everywhere, and those peculiar remedies which may be
bestowed on it. The first are of general obligation; the last, from
their nature, can only be exercised in those courts which the power
making the grant can regulate.' See also The Commonwealth v. The
Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. et al., 43 Pa. St. 227; State of Maryland
v. Northern Central Railroad Co., 18 Md. 193; Colby v. Dennis, 36 Me.
1; Gowan v. Penobscot Railroad Co., 44 id. 140. U.S. v. UNION PAC.
R. CO., 98 U.S. 569 (1878)
It is significant that the guarantee of freedom of speech and press
falls between the religious guarantees and the guarantee of the right
to petition for redress of grievances in the text of the First
Amendment, the principles of which are carried to the States by the
Fourteenth Amendment. It partakes of the nature of both, for it is as
much a guarantee to individuals of their personal right to make their
thoughts public and put them before the community, see Holt, Of the
Liberty of the Press, in Nelson, Freedom of the Press from Hamilton to
the Warren Court 18-19, as it is a social necessity required for the
"maintenance of our political system and an open society." Time, Inc.
v. Hill, supra, at 389. It is because of the personal nature
of this right that we have rejected all manner of prior restraint on
publication, Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, despite strong arguments
that if the material was unprotected the time of suppression was
immaterial. Pound, Equitable Relief Against Defamation and Injuries to
Personality, 29 Harv. L. Rev. 640. The dissemination of the
individual's opinions on matters of public interest is for us, in the
historic words of the Declaration of Independence, an
"unalienable right" that
"governments are instituted among men to secure." History shows us
that the Founders were not always convinced that unlimited discussion
of public issues would be "for the benefit of all of us"13 but that
they firmly adhered to the proposition that the "true liberty of the
press" permitted "every man to publish his opinion." Respublica v.
Oswald, 1 Dall. 319, 325 (Pa.). CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. v. BUTTS, 388
U.S. 130 (1967)
While the "meaning and scope of the First Amendment" must be read "in
light of its history and the evils it was designed forever to
suppress," Everson v. Board of Education, supra, at 14-15, this Court
has also recognized that "this Nation's history has not been one of
entirely sanitized separation between Church and State." Committee for
Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, supra, at 760. "The
fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God
and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly
evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the
Constitution itself." Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S.
203, 213 (1963).5 The Court properly has noted "an unbroken history of
official acknowledgment . . . of the role of religion in American
life." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S., at 674, and has recognized that
these references to "our religious heritage" are constitutionally
acceptable. Id., at 677. EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD, 482 U.S. 578 (1987)
When the First Congress was debating the Bill of Rights, it was
contended that there was no need separately to assert the right of
assembly because it was subsumed in freedom of speech. Mr. Sedgwick of
Massachusetts argued that inclusion of "assembly" among the enumerated
rights would tend to make the Congress "appear trifling in the eyes of
their constituents. . . ." If people freely converse together, they
must assemble for that purpose; it is a self-evident,
unalienable right which the people
possess; it is certainly a thing that never would be called in
question . . . ." 1 Annals of Cong. 731 (1789). Since the right
existed independent of any written guarantee, Sedgwick went on to
argue that if it were the drafting committee's purpose to protect all
inherent rights of the people by listing them, "they might have gone
into a very lengthy enumeration of rights," but this was unnecessary,
he said, "in a Government where none of them were intended to be
infringed." Id., at 732. Mr. Page of Virginia responded, however, that
at times "such rights have been opposed," and that "people have . . .
been prevented from assembling together on their lawful occasions": "[T]herefore
it is well to guard against such stretches of authority, by inserting
the privilege in the declaration of rights. If the people could be
deprived of the power of assembling under any pretext whatsoever, they
might be deprived of every other privilege contained in the clause."
Ibid. The motion to strike "assembly" was defeated. Id., at 733.
RICHMOND NEWSPAPERS, INC. v. VIRGINIA, 448 U.S. 555 (1980)
"Gentlemen, I have insisted, at great length, upon the origin of
governments, and detailed the authorities which you have heard upon
the subject, because I consider it to be not only an essential
support, but the very foundation of the liberty of the press. If Mr.
Burke be right in his principles of government, I admit that the
press, in my sense of its freedom, ought not to be free, nor free in
any sense at all; and that all addresses to the people upon the
subjects of government, and all speculations of amendment, of what
kind or nature soever, are illegal and criminal; since if the people
have, with out possible re-call, delegated all their authorities, they
have no jurisdiction to act, and therefore none to think or write upon
such subjects; and it would be a libel to arraign government or any of
its acts, before those who have no jurisdiction to correct them. But
on the other hand . . . no legal argument can shake the freedom of the
press in my sense of it, if I am supported in my doctrines concerning
the great unalienable right of the people,
to reform or to change their governments. It is because the liberty of
the press resolves itself into this great issue, that it has been in
every country the last liberty which subjects have been able to wrest
from power. Other liberties are held under governments, but the
liberty of opinion keeps governments themselves in due subjection to
their duties." 1 Speeches of Lord Erskine 524-525 (J. High ed. 1876).
HERBERT v. LANDO, 441 U.S. 153 (1979)
The denial of human rights was etched into the American Colonies'
first attempts at establishing self-government. When the colonists
determined to seek their independence from England, they drafted a
unique document cataloguing their grievances against the King and
proclaiming as "self-evident" that "all men are created equal" and are
endowed "with certain unalienable Rights," including those to "Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The self-evident truths and the
unalienable rights were intended, however, to apply only to white men.
An earlier draft of the Declaration of Independence, submitted by
Thomas Jefferson to the Continental Congress, UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA REGENTS v. BAKKE, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)
The Declaration of Independence states the American creed: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This ideal was
not fully achieved with the adoption of our Constitution because of
the hard and tragic reality of Negro slavery. The Constitution of the
new Nation, while heralding liberty, in effect declared all men to be
free and equal - except black men who were to be neither free nor
equal. This inconsistency reflected a fundamental departure from the
American creed, a departure which it took a tragic civil war to set
right. With the adoption, however, of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, freedom and equality were
guaranteed expressly to all regardless "of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude."1 United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 218.
BELL v. MARYLAND, 378 U.S. 226 (1964) |