CIVIL LIBERTY(IES) (noun)
1. the freedom of a citizen to exercise customary rights, as of speech or assembly, without unwarranted or arbitrary interference by the government.
2. such a right as guaranteed by the laws of a country, as in the U.S. by the Bill of Rights.

* Excerpted from the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary 3.0.

Going beyond the dictionary definition, it should be noted that in my "Freedom in the World" series, I used measures for political rights and civil liberties as the basis for my annual assessments of freedom. The term "civil rights" was avoided because it had come to have a special meaning in American English having to do with the rights of minorities. In my work I defined "civil liberties" as: "the rights of the individual against the state, rights to free expression, to a fair trial; they are what most of us mean by freedom." (Raymond D. Gastil, Freedom in the World: 1978: Political Rights and Civil Liberties., G. K. Hall, Boston, 1978, page 7).