Civil or Social Liberty

In his book, On Liberty, J. S. Mill declares that the subject of his book is not ‘Liberty of the Will’, … but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.’ In the sense of safeguarding the liberty of individual or the minority to action, opinion, speech and thought against what Mill calls, ‘the tyranny of majority’, is the scope of Civil or Social Liberty for Mill. Sir Ernest Barker holds that civil liberty denotes liberty of a person in the capacity of an individual and includes personal liberty such as security, health, movement, expression of thought, belief and religion, contract, etc. For Barker, civil liberty includes: (i) physical freedom, (ii) intellectual freedom, and (iii) contractual freedom. Blackstone includes personal security of reputation and acquisition, enjoyment and disposal of personal property also in personal liberty. As such, following Mill, Blackstone and Barker, civil and social liberty will include liberty of action, belief, contract, opinion, speech, thought and also liberty to life, safety, health, movement, trade, business, property, reputation, etc. The Indian Constitution also provides a wide range of civil liberties which includes liberty to business, profession and trade, movement and residence in India, religious liberty, freedom of speech, press, political affiliation and trade union activities, etc. as part of fundamental rights. Civil or social liberty can be treated as rights or conditions that authority and society recognize and protect in the public and private spheres of individuals. Following from Mill’s differentiation between the ‘self-regarding’ and ‘other-regarding’ actions, we can also distinguish between private and public spheres of individual’s life. Civil liberty is also understood in terms of liberty that comes from following the established law or liberty as established by law. Rousseau used civil liberty to denote this aspect.