Right to petition

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The right to petition is the freedom of individuals (and sometimes groups and corporations) to petition their government for a correction or repair of some form of injustice without fear of punishment for the same. Although often overlooked in favor of other more famous freedoms and sometimes taken for granted^[1], many other civil liberties are enforceable against the government only by exercising this basic right,^[2] making it a fundamental right in both representative democracies (to protect public participation)^[1] and liberal democracies. The "right to petition," per se, is not mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the related freedom of assembly and right to "take part in the government" are.^[3]

[edit] United States

In the United States, the right to petition is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, and it specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people ... to petition the Government for redress of grievances." Its roots within the colonies can be traced back to the Declaration of Independence,^[4]. Historically, the right can be traced further back^[2] to English documents such as the Magna Carta, which, by its acceptance by the monarchy, implicitly affirmed the right, and the later Bill of Rights 1689, which explicitly declared the "right of the subjects to petition the king"^[5].

While the prohibition of abridgement of the right to petition originally referred only to the federal legislature (the Congress) and courts, the incorporation doctrine later expanded the protection of the right to its current scope, over all state and federal courts and legislatures and the executive branches of the state^[4] and federal governments. The right to petition includes under its umbrella the right to sue the government^[6], and the right of individuals, groups, and corporations (via corporate personhood), to lobby^[4] the government.

[edit] References