OSHER 45 - The Right to Liberty: Its Justification, Scope, and Limits

It is part of the American and Western political tradition that people are free and have rights to various liberties. Among those liberties are freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom to participate in political affairs, freedom to acquire and use property, and, perhaps the most important, what the Founders called the pursuit of happiness. Understanding these rights raises a number of questions: What is a right? What liberty rights do we have? What justifies these rights? Is it a self-evident truth that we have them? If not, how can they be defended? What do these rights include? What do they leave out? How do we decide the scope and limits of each basic right? These and similar questions will be the focus of our course. We will read John Stuart Mill's classic short essay, "On Liberty," to help us consider these questions.