Duties of Citizens

Citizenship also implies duties or obligations. Because the United States government, like all democracies, depends on citizens' participation, citizens are obliged to remain informed about events in their society, and should feel a duty to participate in the political process by exercising their right to vote voting is a duty, as well as a right. In practice, many citizens do not feel this sense of duty, and voter turnout has been decreasing in the United States since 1896--a potentially worrisome development. Voting, one of the most cherished rights of citizens, should also be a deeply-felt duty.

Another important duty of citizens is to serve as jurors when called to do so. Historically, the right of persons to be tried by a jury of their peers was considered one of the most effective safeguards against tyranny in England, and the American revolutionaries also considered it an important right when framing the Bill of Rights, protecting it in the Sixth Amendment. Because the right to a jury trial is designed to protect all citizens against unfair arrest and imprisonment, citizens should feel a strong obligation to serve as a juror if called upon to do so.

Citizens also have other duties. Obviously, citizens are obliged to obey the laws of the U.S., their state, and their community. The First Amendment grants citizens the right to protest against laws they consider unwise or unjust, but only in rare instances, when they consider laws or government policies extremely unjust, are they entitled to engage in civil disobedience(a term coined by writer Henry David Thoreau, above), defying those laws. (The most notable instance of civil disobedience in American history was civil rights' advocates' defiance of laws maintaining segregation between whites and blacks in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s.)