ABSTRACT
Human rights can be difficult to understand because they are not just citizenship rights, that is, people's political and civil liberties vis-a-vis the state, but instead affirm personhood with reference to society and the world as well as to the nation-state. An exclusive claim for citizenship rights in the liberal tradition can actually undermine human rights because citizens selfishly guard their own legal rights and, by extension, their material rights. National constitutions are the key institutions that formalize what rights citizens have or can aspire to have. The first modern constitution was the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and although this document was the work of rich Whig gentry and churchmen, it greatly advanced political freedoms. This chapter compares a variety of constitutions after very briefly describing their historical contexts. According to the United Nations—the Republic of Korea, Spain, and the United States—are high-income countries; Algeria and Paraguay are lower-middle-income countries; and Ethiopia is a least developed country.
