A citizen is a member of a political community with rights and obligations. Citizenship is usually based on membership of the state, although there are also examples of citizenship of a nation-state or even a city-state, as in Switzerland and Finland. Citizenship is not a universal concept, and there have been exclusions from entitlement to citizenship on the basis of such things as skin color, ethnicity, sex, and free status (not being a slave). Today, however, most countries grant citizens the right to vote, participate in government and other civic activities.
A person who is a citizen of a country is usually entitled to benefits like social security and medical insurance. Other rights may include the right to own property, freedom of speech, religion, privacy, and the expectation that police will respect and protect their citizens. Citizenship is often a matter of birth, but it can be acquired through naturalization. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States states: “All persons born in the United States and resident thereof, shall be citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside, and shall be free forever of any claim to any other citizenship.”
In the ancient Greek polis, the concept of citizenship was largely organic, meaning that it reflected the way people lived their lives. As the philosopher Aristotle argued, to be human meant to take part in the governance of the city. Citizens (polites polites) were both rulers and ruled, and they shared the duties of ruling with their fellow citizens.
Today, the concept of citizenship is much more dependent on a person’s relations with other members of society, especially their economic class. As a result, many thinkers have debated whether citizenship is really a fundamental human attribute. Some have argued that citizenship might have been an invention of modern industrialized societies, while others have pointed to the existence of small-scale organic communities in the ancient world, such as the polis.
Law is the discipline concerned with the body of rules and laws of a particular community, and their enforcement by a controlling authority. Laws govern all aspects of life, from the personal to the political, and have four principal functions: establishing standards, maintaining order, resolving disputes, and protecting liberties and rights.
There are numerous branches of law, including civil law and criminal law. Criminal law focuses on a person’s right to due process and to fair trial, and civil law focuses on the protection of private property and personal liberty. There is also corporate law, which deals with the rules and regulations of business organizations. Trust law involves the structure and regulation of a trust, and evidence law deals with what materials are admissible in court for a case to be built.
Besides these, other laws deal with such issues as zoning, environmental regulation, public safety, and education. All these laws are intended to ensure that citizens live in a safe, secure, and prosperous environment.