C2.6 Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
Human Autonomy. Does the system maximize human freedom and self-determination?
Pass threshold
Civil-liberties score ≥53 of 60 on the Freedom House checklist; informed consent to medical treatment protected in law; any compulsory treatment, vaccination, quarantine or isolation prescribed by law, time-limited and open to independent judicial review
Clause by clause:
- Civil-liberties score ≥53 of 60 on the Freedom House checklist
- informed consent to medical treatment protected in law
- any compulsory treatment, vaccination, quarantine or isolation prescribed by law, time-limited and open to independent judicial review
What it asks
Economic security is not bought with liberty: expression, belief, association, due process, equal treatment under law and personal autonomy, privacy and consent to medical treatment included, are protected in practice; compulsion in the name of health rests on law, is time-limited and is open to independent review; and those who administer the system answer to independent courts.
Why it matters
Domain 2 measures freedom from economic coercion, participation and exit, but not the civil liberties and legal protections those freedoms depend on. The omission matters most where allocation runs through the state or through shared data systems: a system can provide for everyone and still punish dissent, surveil its participants or deny them an independent hearing against its administrators. It is also the dimension on which the corpus's configured national economies differ most from the rest. Bodily integrity belongs to personal autonomy, but none of the fifteen civil-liberties questions of the Freedom House checklist asks about consent to medical treatment or about the limits of compulsion in public health, and a system that allocates care, or conditions benefits on health measures, is where that liberty is most exposed; clauses 2 and 3 measure it.
How it differs from nearby criteria
C2.6 from C2.4 and C4.4: participation and the distribution and accountability of power are measured there; C2.6 measures rights held against that power, whoever holds it. The Freedom House civil-liberties checklist is used because it covers exactly this set (expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, personal autonomy and individual rights) and leaves out the electoral questions that C2.4 and C4.4 measure. Clauses 2 and 3 cover consent, refusal and the legal form of compulsion; they do not decide entitlement to particular procedures or to treatments not approved (abortion, assisted dying, a right to try), which are contested and on which the criterion takes no side. Restrictions on movement also enter the Freedom House score, through its freedom-of-movement question; clause 3 tests whether compulsion is prescribed by law, limited in time and reviewable, not how much of it there is.
How it is measured
Clause 1. Configured national economy: the Freedom House civil-liberties score, 0–60, in Freedom in the World for the stated date, cross-checked against V-Dem's Civil Liberties Index; where the two sources disagree about whether the threshold is met, the call is flagged (protocol 6.1), not resolved silently. Design, mechanism or comprehensive system: the fifteen civil-liberties questions of the Freedom House checklist are answered from the system's own sources, 0–4 each, crediting only what the system states and provides for (protocol 4.1): its guarantees, the body that decides disputes between participants and the system's administrators and that body's independence from them, and, where allocation depends on personal data, stated limits on collection, access, use and retention. A mechanism operating inside a wider economy is scored on what it adds to or takes from the liberties of that economy (protocol 3.2). Clauses 2 and 3 are shown from the law in force at the stated date, which the scoring document names. Clause 2: a statute, code or constitutional provision requires the free and informed consent of the person concerned before any medical intervention, or of a lawful representative where the person cannot consent, and protects the right to refuse consent or to withdraw it at any time, as Article 5 of the Council of Europe's Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (the Oviedo Convention) states it; the only exceptions are an emergency in which consent cannot be obtained and compulsion that meets clause 3. Clause 3: compulsion is any measure that applies treatment, vaccination, quarantine or isolation to a person without their consent, or that penalizes refusal by a fine, by detention or by loss of employment, schooling or an essential benefit. Every such measure is prescribed by law; is time-limited, lapsing at a stated time unless renewed by a decision itself open to review, so that a standing requirement with no such limit does not meet the clause; and is open to challenge by the person concerned before an independent court or tribunal with power to end it. Where the scoring window contains a public-health emergency, the measures actually taken are read as well: V-Dem's Pandemic Violations of Democratic Standards Index, which codes emergency measures without a time limit, and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker for what was imposed. For a design, both clauses are answered from its own sources, crediting only what it states and provides for (protocol 4.1); a mechanism is scored on what it adds to or takes from the protections of the economy it operates in (protocol 3.2).
Indicators
clause 1, Freedom House, Freedom in the World, civil-liberties score (0–60); cross-check, V-Dem Civil Liberties Index; clauses 2 and 3, the law in force, with the Oviedo Convention's Article 5 as the consent standard and, for a public-health emergency, V-Dem's Pandemic Violations of Democratic Standards Index and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.
How scores are anchored
1.0, pass
Score of 53 or more of 60 (the top band of Freedom House's former 1–7 civil-liberties rating), consent to medical treatment protected in law, and every medical or public-health compulsion prescribed by law, time-limited and open to an independent court; or a design whose stated guarantees and independent adjudication answer the checklist at that level and state the same protections, with component evidence where it relies on institutions not yet built.
0.5, partial
Score of 17 to 52; or a score of 53 or more with consent or the limits of compulsion not shown; or a design whose guarantees are partial, unstated for some questions, or left to administrators' discretion without an independent hearing, where the gap has a credible pathway to close under the system's own logic.
0.0, structural failure
Score of 16 or less (the two lowest bands of the former rating), or a design that subordinates expression, association, due process or consent to medical treatment to its allocation or administration with no independent adjudication.
Normative roots
From N3 (Coercion Minimization) + N7 (Governance Legitimacy and Anti-Capture).
Judgment calls on this criterion
How the systems score
0.5, partial
CCO-PTF-CIP-SZH, Participatory Economics, Integral, Degrowth Economics, Nordic Social Democracy, Market Socialism, Sovereign Wealth Fund Statism, Georgism / LVT, Ostrom Commons, Islamic Finance, Mutual Credit / LETS, State Capitalism / Singapore, Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, MMT + Job Guarantee, Status Quo Market Capitalism, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Stakeholder Capitalism, State Capitalism / Qatar, Doughnut Economics, Libertarian Minarchism
0.0, structural failure
Sources
Definition: NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V (Package B, decision 45.1; clauses 2 and 3, Package C, decision 46.1). Anchors: NEEC_Criteria_v2_s45.md, Appendix V (Package B, decision 45.1; clauses 2 and 3, Package C, decision 46.1).