personal liberty

noun

1. the liberty of an individual to act with free will except for those restraints imposed by law to safeguard the physical, moral, political, and economic welfare of others.

Word History and Origins

Origin of personal liberty¹

First recorded in 1840–50

Example Sentences

The National Convention of Colored Men that met in Syracuse, New York, in the fall of 1864 called the right to vote the “keystone to the arch of human liberty” and insisted that “personal liberty” and “all other rights” effectively “become mere privileges, held at the option of others, where we are excepted from the general political liberty.”

Read more on Slate

“The attempt to uphold these personal liberty laws and simultaneously the government’s attempts to take these Black fugitives led to violence, and to perceptions that the so-called slave-power was the aggressor,” Waite said.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger attended the event and described its ethos: “The glue that binds the NatCon coalition is their contempt for the proceduralism of the conservatism that preceded them, their conviction that Republicans’ old focus on small government and personal liberty amounted to nothing more than unilateral disarmament against the teeming hordes of the left.

Read more on Salon

“Protecting both public health and personal liberty is how we restore faith in our institutions and Make America Healthy Again.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

To some gamblers, the religious opposition may seem patronizing and overbearing, a bunch of pearl-clutching from hypocrites who demand, for themselves, personal liberty to spend their money as they please.

Read more on Slate