Individual Rights vs. Public Order Essay

Introduction

Public order means a social control of public life and activities of individuals in order to ensure favorable conditions for citizens. Thus, the main disadvantage of public order is that it implies a total control of life and behavior of individuals and their personal relations. This situation violates privacy rights and personal freedom of citizens and established surveillance over social and public life. First, public participation in this effort, while likely to create some initial dissension, would ultimately lead to public acceptance of the rule (Schmalleger and Petersilia 2001). Second, the rule likewise would seem to have some attraction for the police as it does give them some discretion to decide when an assault has occurred, and the rule is simple, precise, and easily administered and monitored. Third, the rule reflects sound substantive policy by recognizing that the assault statutes are designed as “order maintenance” offenses. For instance, public order implies that the society will know that you have eat on breakfast and what TV programs you prefer to watch in the evening. The system may illustrate the difficulties which are inherent in an autocratic system. having no representation of the interests which an order creates and which, to a greater or lesser extent, are ensured by parliamentary representation (Robinson, 2001).

Main body

The disadvantage of public order is that it protects rights of the society but violates rights of individuals. This problem is the fundamental inequality of power between the individual and the state. Human rights embody standards for the relationship between the rulers and the ruled against the backdrop of their basic asymmetry of power which is inherent in the state system. These standards are rooted in the belief that the human being does not exist for the benefit of the state but that the state exists for the benefit of the human being.The possible reaction of important public groups could not be well gauged by the government. Furthermore, a public harmony of interests could only be achieved after a fundamental alteration of the autocracy’s powers (Schmalleger and Petersilia, 2001). These are perfectly sound principles for public relations but are corroded by the offensive term engineering of public opinion that connotes manipulation of the public, a manipulation that most public citizens innately fear; a fear that makes them wary of the work of the practitioner, even today. The organization of a society as a state implies that the authorities dispose of power to enforce the rules governing that society. It might seem logical, therefore, that the relationship between the citizens and the authorities would be characterized entirely by obligations on the side of the former and rights on the side of the latter. As far as the rules thus enforced would also confer rights upon citizens, these would only be rights vis-à-vis other citizens, not vis-à-vis the authorities. Such a consequence, however, would be at complete variance with the belief that the function of the state is to serve the interests of the people (Robinson, 2001).Clearly, to the extent that this argument could be upheld, key liberal claims would be invalidated–that industrial societies become increasingly ‘middle class’, that mobility shows an upward bias, that the need to develop resources as fully as possible encourages a greater equality of opportunity (Schmalleger and Petersilia, 2001).

Conclusion

Public order violates indicial rights in favor of social and public rights and the rule of law. The challenge of attempting to account for the degree of cross-national commonality that prevails in relative rates–and indeed for their tendency towards invariance in other respects also–cannot be avoided. This idea proclaimed that the human being has, of his own, an original right to what is indispensable for a worthy existence and that, on the basis of this original right, he may make claims toward the authorities.

References

1. Robinson, M. B. (2001). Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal Justice. Prentice Hall; 1st edition.
2. Schmalleger, f. Petersilia, J. (1998). Criminal Justice Today. An Introductory Text for the Twenty-First Century, Prentice Hall College Div.