The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union

The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union

Author: William A. Donohue

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 1985-01-01

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1412838444

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This is a critical analysis of the history of the American Civil Liberties Union and represents the first published account of the ACLU's record. Other works on the organization either dealt only with specific issues or have been simply journalistic accounts. Donohue provides the first systematic analysis by a social scientist. It is unquestionably the most serious work now available and is likely to remain the touchstone for any such work for many years to come.


The Taming of Free Speech

The Taming of Free Speech

Author: Laura Weinrib

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-10-10

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 0674545710

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In the early decades of the twentieth century, business leaders condemned civil liberties as masks for subversive activity, while labor sympathizers denounced the courts as shills for industrial interests. But by the Second World War, prominent figures in both camps celebrated the judiciary for protecting freedom of speech. In this strikingly original history, Laura Weinrib illustrates how a surprising coalition of lawyers and activists made judicial enforcement of the Bill of Rights a defining feature of American democracy. The Taming of Free Speech traces our understanding of civil liberties to conflict between 1910 and 1940 over workers’ right to strike. As self-proclaimed partisans in the class war, the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union promoted a bold vision of free speech that encompassed unrestricted picketing and boycotts. Over time, however, they subdued their rhetoric to attract adherents and prevail in court. At the height of the New Deal, many liberals opposed the ACLU’s litigation strategy, fearing it would legitimize a judiciary they deemed too friendly to corporations and too hostile to the administrative state. Conversely, conservatives eager to insulate industry from government regulation pivoted to embrace civil liberties, despite their radical roots. The resulting transformation in constitutional jurisprudence—often understood as a triumph for the Left—was in fact a calculated bargain. America’s civil liberties compromise saved the courts from New Deal attack and secured free speech for labor radicals and businesses alike. Ever since, competing groups have clashed in the arena of ideas, shielded by the First Amendment.


Culture Wars

Culture Wars

Author: Roger Chapman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 1135

ISBN-13: 1317473515

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The term "culture wars" refers to the political and sociological polarisation that has characterised American society the past several decades. This new edition provides an enlightening and comprehensive A-to-Z ready reference, now with supporting primary documents, on major topics of contemporary importance for students, teachers, and the general reader. It aims to promote understanding and clarification on pertinent topics that too often are not adequately explained or discussed in a balanced context. With approximately 640 entries plus more than 120 primary documents supporting both sides of key issues, this is a unique and defining work, indispensable to informed discussions of the most timely and critical issues facing America today.


Surveillance in America [2 volumes]

Surveillance in America [2 volumes]

Author: Pam Dixon

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 728

ISBN-13:

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An excellent resource for high school and college students, this book surveys the size, scope, and nature of government surveillance in 21st-century America, with a particular focus on technology-enabled surveillance and its impact on privacy and other civil liberties. The advent of online, cellular, and other digital networks has enabled today's government surveillance operations to become more extensive and far more thorough than any other programs before them. Where does the line between taking actions to help ensure the safety of the general population against terrorism and other threats and the privacy of individual citizens lie? Is there any such clearly defined line anymore? This two-volume set examines the key issues surrounding government surveillance and privacy in 21st-century America, covering topics ranging from the surveillance conducted during colonial days, which inspired the Fourth Amendment, to the new high-tech developments that pose unprecedented potential challenges to the privacy of millions of Americans. Readers will gain insight into the complex challenge of interpreting the Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless, unreasonable government searches and understand how changes in the methods by which the U.S. government carries out counterterrorism and law enforcement activities influence its relationship with American citizens and businesses.


After Aquarius Dawned

After Aquarius Dawned

Author: Judy Kutulas

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-03-16

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1469632926

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In this book, Judy Kutulas complicates the common view that the 1970s were a time of counterrevolution against the radical activities and attitudes of the previous decade. Instead, Kutulas argues that the experiences and attitudes that were radical in the 1960s were becoming part of mainstream culture in the 1970s, as sexual freedom, gender equality, and more complex notions of identity, work, and family were normalized through popular culture--television, movies, music, political causes, and the emergence of new communities. Seemingly mundane things like watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, listening to Carole King songs, donning Birkenstock sandals, or reading Roots were actually critical in shaping Americans' perceptions of themselves, their families, and their relation to authority. Even as these cultural shifts eventually gave way to a backlash of political and economic conservatism, Kutulas shows that what critics perceive as the narcissism of the 1970s was actually the next logical step in a longer process of assimilating 1960s values like individuality and diversity into everyday life. Exploring such issues as feminism, sexuality, and race, Kutulas demonstrates how popular culture helped many Americans make sense of key transformations in U.S. economics, society, politics, and culture in the late twentieth century.


How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

Author: Leigh Ann Wheeler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0190206527

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How Sex Became a Civil Liberty shows how we came to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, thanks to the work of ACLU leaders and attorneys who forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution.


The Collapse of Fortress Bush

The Collapse of Fortress Bush

Author: Alasdair Roberts

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2008-02-01

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0814776256

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When the Bush presidency began to collapse, pundits were quick to tell a tale of the “imperial presidency” gone awry, a story of secretive, power-hungry ideologues who guided an arrogant president down the road to ruin. But the inside story of the failures of the Bush administration is both much more complex and alarming, says leading policy analyst Alasdair Roberts. In the most comprehensive, balanced view of the Bush presidency to date, Roberts portrays a surprisingly weak president, hamstrung by bureaucratic, constitutional, cultural and economic barriers and strikingly unable to wield authority even within his own executive branch. The Collapse of Fortress Bush shows how the president fought—and lost—key battles with the defense and intelligence communities. From Homeland Security to Katrina, Bush could not coordinate agencies to meet domestic threats or disasters. Either the Bush administration refused to exercise authority, was thwarted in the attempt to exercise authority, or wielded authority but could not meet the test of legitimacy needed to enact their goals. Ultimately, the vaunted White House discipline gave way to public recriminations among key advisers. Condemned for secretiveness, the Bush administration became one of the most closely scrutinized presidencies in the modern era. Roberts links the collapse of the Bush presidency to deeper currents in American politics and culture, especially a new militarism and the supremacy of the Reagan-era consensus on low taxes, limited government, and free markets. Only in this setting was it possible to have a “total war on terrorism” in which taxes were reduced, private consumption was encouraged, and businesses were lightly regulated. A balanced, incisive account by a skilled observer of U.S. government, The Collapse of Fortress Bush turns the spotlight from the powerful cabal that launched the war in Iraq to tell a much more disturbing story about American power and the failure of executive leadership.


Encyclopedia of Human Rights

Encyclopedia of Human Rights

Author: David P Forsythe

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-08-27

Total Pages: 2641

ISBN-13: 0195334027

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This four-volume encyclopedia set offers coverage of all aspects of human rights theory, practice, law, and history.


Laying Down the Law

Laying Down the Law

Author: R. W. Kostal

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 067424382X

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Winner of the John Phillip Reed Book Award, American Society for Legal History A legal historian opens a window on the monumental postwar effort to remake fascist Germany and Japan into liberal rule-of-law nations, shedding new light on the limits of America’s ability to impose democracy on defeated countries. Following victory in WWII, American leaders devised an extraordinarily bold policy for the occupations of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: to achieve their permanent demilitarization by compelled democratization. A quintessentially American feature of this policy was the replacement of fascist legal orders with liberal rule-of-law regimes. In his comparative investigation of these epic reform projects, noted legal historian R. W. Kostal shows that Americans found it easier to initiate the reconstruction of foreign legal orders than to complete the process. While American agencies made significant inroads in the elimination of fascist public law in Germany and Japan, they were markedly less successful in generating allegiance to liberal legal ideas and institutions. Drawing on rich archival sources, Kostal probes how legal-reconstructive successes were impeded by German and Japanese resistance on one side, and by the glaring deficiencies of American theory, planning, and administration on the other. Kostal argues that the manifest failings of America’s own rule-of-law democracy weakened US credibility and resolve in bringing liberal democracy to occupied Germany and Japan. In Laying Down the Law, Kostal tells a dramatic story of the United States as an ambiguous force for moral authority in the Cold War international system, making a major contribution to American and global history of the rule of law.