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American Ideas of Equality: A Social History, 1750-2020 "Equality is a fundamental American value. The nation's Declaration of Independence declared equality as a self-evident foundation for political life and the pursuit of equality has continued to dominate policy debates in the twenty-first century. However, equality is a complex idea and it has had different meanings in different eras. Using a variety of data sources, this book describes how the views we hold regarding this fundamental national value developed as products of our cultural history from the origins of the American republic to 2020. It traces how cultural transmission, political and economic structures, and communication technology have shaped this core American value. The book begins with the early days of the American republic and follows ideological changes through the era of the self-made man, the rise of corporate society, the New Deal, the post-World War II era, and the era of Civil Rights. It ends with a detailed discussion of how this history has resulted in some of the most divisive political and social controversies of the twenty-first century. Most studies of equality have taken this as having a single, clear meaning. Most often, this has been either how much equality of opportunity exists now or has existed in the past, or how much equality of condition exists now or has existed in the past. They rarely consider that people can be equal or unequal in different ways, and that what we mean when we talk about equality or engage in debates about it has been shaped by historical experience. This book is a work of historical sociology that examines the forces that have shaped and re-shaped this fundamental cultural value. The book leads readers through an exploration of how different stages of American history have led to thinking about equality in terms of independence from hierarchy, the opportunity for self-creation, access to services and resources, widespread upward mobility, and equality across social categories. It takes a unique multi-disciplinary approach, combining intellectual and cultural history with political, economic, and sociological analysis. No other book offers this kind of analysis of the both the historical origins and contemporary consequences of a cultural concept at the core of American national life. American Ideas of Equality will interest academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in American studies; cultural, economic, and political history; political science; and sociology"-- Provided by publisher.
Civil Liberties and the State: A Documentary and Reference Guide This book covers documents and related information pertaining to civil liberties in America, including the debates over arbitrary state action, due process, equal protection, freedom of speech, and privacy issues. The USA PATRIOT Act, the actions and free speech of the Ku Klux Klan, and the use of privately owned devices with GPS by law enforcement are all highly controversial topics that fall under the blanket of civil liberties and federal or state authority--subjects that are important to most Americans. This book provides a comprehensive examination of arbitrary state action post-September 11, 2001, combining detailed examinations of specific legislation with watershed coverage of issues such as freedom of speech, press, and religion as well as various aspects of criminal law and procedure. This text presents documents from Britain, the American colonial period, the Founding period, and the modern era, including recent Supreme Court cases. The author provides an accompanying analysis of each document, providing insightful historical context and ramifications of the decisions and the laws passed.
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in America This book covers civil rights and civil liberties politics in the United States from the ratification of the Bill of Rights to more recent controversies, such as the travel ban and proposals to end birthright citizenship. Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: A Reference Handbook provides a thorough overview of civil rights in U.S. history, detailing all the relevant amendments to the Constitution and reviewing key Supreme Court decisions and landmark cases on the topic. Aimed at general readers as well as high school, college, and university students, it focuses on the role of federal courts in civil rights and civil liberties politics. It also profiles the primary actors in civil rights and civil liberties, both organizations and people. The volume comprises seven chapters. Chapter 1 presents the history and background of the topic, and Chapter 2 discusses problems, controversies, and solutions. Chapter 3 consists of essays by contributors that round out the coauthors' expertise. Chapter 4 profiles important organizations and people, while Chapter 5 offers relevant data and documents. Chapter 6 is composed of an annotated list of important resources. Finally, Chapter 7 offers a useful chronology citing and describing the major events related to the topic from the nation's founding until 2019.
Civil Rights Movement: People and Perspectives Documents the importance of the civil rights movement and its lasting impression on American society and culture.
Great Events from History: Human Rights This new edition of Great Events from History: Human Rights documents the progression, regression, and overall history of human rights through pivotal events. This 4-volume work traces the path of civil liberties and natural rights through history, from ancient codes to modern movements through pivotal events that have directly affected people and their freedoms.
Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction Today, it is usually not long before a problem gets expressed as a human rights issue. An appeal to human rights in the face of injustice can be a heartfelt and morally justified demand for some, while for others it remains merely an empty slogan. Taking an international perspective and focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, health and discrimination, this Very Short Introduction will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and complexities behind this vitally relevant issue. Looking at the philosophical justification for rights, the historical origins of human rights and how they are formed in law, Andrew Clapham explains what our human rights actually are, what they might be, and where the human rights movement is heading.
Inherent Rights, the Written Constitution, and Popular Sovereignty In recent decades the Ninth Amendment, a provision designed to clarify that the federal government was to be one of enumerated and limited powers, has been turned into an unenumerated rights clause that effectively grants unlimited power to the judiciary. Was this the intent of the framers of the Constitution? McAffee argues that the founders had a rather different set of priorities than ours, and that the goal of enforcing fundamental human rights was not why they drafted any of the first ten amendments. They did not intend to grant to the courts the power to generate fundamental rights, whether by reference to custom or history, reason or natural law, or societal values or consensus. It has become increasingly popular to identify our constitutional order as an experiment in the protection of fundamental human rights and to forget that it is also an experiment in self-government. As fundamental as the founding generation believed basic rights to be, they saw popular authority to make decisions about government as being even more central to the project in which they were engaged. They supported natural law and rights, but they felt strongly that those rights did not bind the people or their government unless they were inserted in the written Constitution. They did not contemplate that there would be unwritten limitations on the powers granted to government.
Justice at War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights During Times of Crisis The status of civil rights in the United States today is as volatile an issue as ever, with many Americans wondering if new laws, implemented after the events of September 11, restrict more people than they protect. How will efforts to eradicate racism, sexism, and xenophobia be affected by the measures our government takes in the name of protecting its citizens? Richard Delgado, one of the founding figures in the Critical Race Theory movement, addresses these problems with his latest book in the award-winning Rodrigo Chronicles. Employing the narrative device he and other Critical Race theorists made famous, Delgado assembles a cast of characters to discuss such urgent and timely topics as race, terrorism, hate speech, interracial relationships, freedom of speech, and new theories on civil rights stemming from the most recent war. In the course of this new narrative, Delgado provides analytical breakthroughs, offering new civil rights theories, new approaches to interracial romance and solidarity, and a fresh analysis of how whiteness and white privilege figure into the debate on affirmative action. The characters also discuss the black/white binary paradigm of race and show why it persists even at a time when the country's population is rapidly diversifying.
More Secure, Less Free? The first comprehensive analysis of the full range of anti-terror initiatives undertaken in the United States after the 2001 terrorist attacks Unlike earlier books published shortly after the September 11 attacks that focus on the Patriot Act, More Secure, Less Free? covers the Patriot Act but goes well beyond, analyzing Total Information Awareness, Terrorist Information and Prevention System (TIPS), Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II), and a number of other "second wave" antiterror initiatives. It's also the first book of its kind to go beyond federal measures to explain the devolution of antiterror policies to the states, and now to the military as well. Author Mark Sidel discusses the continuing debates on antiterror law at the state level, with a focus on the important states of New York, California, and Michigan, and explains how the military-through an informant program known as "Eagle Eyes" is now taking a direct hand in domestic anti-terror efforts. The volume also discusses and analyzes crucially important aspects of American antiterror policy that have been largely ignored in other volumes and discusses the effects of antiterror policy on the American academic world and the American nonprofit sector, for example. And it provides the first comparative perspectives on U.S. antiterror policy yet published in an American volume, discussing antiterror initiatives in Great Britain, Australia, and India and contrasting those to the American experience. More Secure, Less Free? is important and essential reading for anyone interested in an analytical perspective on American antiterror policy since September 11 that goes well beyond the Patriot Act. Mark Sidel is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa and a research scholar at the University's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.
Opinions Throughout History: Gender Roles & Rights This new series from Grey House offers in-depth, single volumes that follow the debate, or path, to a decision on a controversial topic as it evolved throughout history. Each volume offers a wide range of opinion essays and editorials, speeches, and journal articles and expert analysis.
Opinions Throughout History: National Security vs. Civil and Privacy Rights Follow the debate or path to a decision on a controversial topic as it evolved throughout history. Includes a wide range of opinion essays and editorials, speeches, and journal articles and expert analysis.
The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion "In The Paradox of Democracy: New Media and the Eternal Problem of Politics, Sean Illing and Zac Gershberg argue that, although free speech and media has always been a necessary condition of democracy, that very freedom also is its greatest threat. Free speech gives those who would destroy democracy license to mislead the public, using whatever forms of media are available. New forms of media offer opportunities to both supporters and critics of democracy. Reaching back to the ancient Greeks and continuing through media disruptions such as the invention of the printing press, the growth of "yellow" journalism and mass circulation newspapers, to new media today, they contend that democracies have always been unsettled by changes in media. The authors trace how each of these changes have challenged democracy by providing new ways of talking about politics and of reaching audiences with often unsettling effects. They conclude by exploring what kinds of communication facilitates and defends democracy as changing technology overwhelms older forms of communication"-- Provided by publisher
Also available in print: P95.8 .G47 2022
The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment In these original essays, America's leading historians and legal scholars reassess the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and its relevance to issues of liberty, justice, and equality. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, reasserting the radical, egalitarian dimensions of the Constitution. It also laid the foundations for future civil rights and social justice legislation. Yet subsequent reinterpretation and misappropriation have curbed more substantive change. With constitutional jurisprudence undergoing a revival, The Promises of Liberty provides a full portrait of the Thirteenth Amendment and its potential for ensuring liberty. The collection begins with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis, who discusses the failure of the Thirteenth Amendment to achieve its framers' objectives. The next piece, by Alexander Tsesis, provides a detailed account of the Amendment's revolutionary character. James M. McPherson, another Pulitzer recipient, recounts the influence of abolitionists on the ratification process, and Paul Finkelman focuses on who freed the slaves and President Lincoln's commitment to ending slavery. Michael Vorenberg revisits the nineteenth century's understanding of freedom and citizenship and the Amendment's surprisingly small role in the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. William M. Wiecek shows how the Supreme Court's narrow interpretation once rendered the guarantee of freedom nearly illusory, and the collection's third Pulitzer Prize winner, David M. Oshinsky, explains how peonage undermined the prohibition against compulsory service. Subsequent essays relate the Thirteenth Amendment to congressional authority, hate crimes legislation, the labor movement, and immigrant rights. These chapters analyze unique features of the amendment along with its elusive meanings and affirm its power to reform criminal and immigration law, affirmative action policies, and the protection of civil liberties.
Religious Freedom in America: A Reference Handbook This book provides the answers to controversial questions about religious liberties in the United States and connected issues through balanced, thorough, and nonjudgmental coverage of the issues in a reference format. Ideally suited for students and general readers who want to learn more about the history and current events concerning religious freedom in an easy-to-understand fashion. Includes a Perspectives chapter that allows readers to hear opposing voices from individuals who are concerned with religious freedom in America. Presents the facts about religious freedom so that readers can reach their own conclusions. Highlights the challenge of reaching an agreement on the line of church/state separation that exempts some individuals from obeying laws because of their religious beliefs in an increasingly pluralistic society comprising members of diverse faiths.
Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age Christianity Today Book Award of Merit in Politics and Public Life (2024) How to heal America's deep divisions by preserving religious liberty for all       As our political and social landscapes polarize along party lines, religious liberty faces threats from both sides. From antidiscrimination commissions targeting conservative Christians to travel bans punishing Muslims, recent litigation has revealed the selective approach both left and right take when it comes to freedom of religion. But what if religious liberty can help cure our political division?       Drawing on constitutional law, history, and sociology, Thomas C. Berg shows us how reaffirming religious freedom cultivates the good of individuals and society. After explaining the features of polarization and the societal benefits of diverse religious practices, Berg offers practical counsel on balancing religious freedom against other essential values.       Protecting Americans' ability to live according to their beliefs undergirds a healthy, pluralistic society--and this protection must extend to everyone, not just political allies. Lay readers and legal scholars who are weary of partisan quarreling will find Berg's case timely and compelling.

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Civil Rights in America: 1500 to the Present Giving significant attention to 19th and 20th century American civil rights, as well as post1950s civil rights issues, this text offers an overview, discussion and documentation ranging from the use of black slaves in the New World (1501) to California's Proposition 187.
Congress Shall Make No Law The First Amendment declares "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Yet, Congress and the states have sought repeatedly to curb these freedoms. The Supreme Court of the United States in turn gradually expanded First Amendment protection for freedom of expression but also defined certain categories of expression: obscenity, defamation, commercial speech, and disruptive expression-as constitutionally unprotected. From the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 to the most recent cases to come before the Supreme Court, noted legal scholar David M. O'Brien provides the first comprehensive examination of these exceptions to the absolute command of the First Amendment.
The Constitutional Rights of Children When fifteen-year-old Gerald Gault of Globe, Arizona, allegedly made an obscene phone call to a neighbor, he was arrested by the local police, who failed to inform his parents. After a hearing in which the neighbor didn't even testify, Gault was promptly sentenced to six years in a juvenile boot camp for an offense that would have cost an adult only two months. Even in a nation fed up with juvenile delinquency, that sentence seemed over the top and inspired a spirited defense on Gault's behalf. Led by Norman Dorsen, the ACLU ultimately took Gault's case to the Supreme Court and in 1967 won a landmark decision authored by Justice Abe Fortas. Widely celebrated as the most important children's rights case of the twentieth century, In re: Gault affirmed that children have some of the same rights as adults and formally incorporated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process protections into the administration of the nation's juvenile courts. Placing this case within the context of its changing times, David Tanenhaus shows how the ACLU litigated Gault by questioning the Progressive Era assumption that juvenile courts should not follow criminal procedure. He then takes readers to the Supreme Court to fully explore the oral arguments and examine how the Court came to decide Gault, focusing on Justice Fortas's majority opinion, concurring opinions, Justice Potter Stewart's lone dissent, and initial responses to the decision. The book explores the contested legacy of Gault, charting changes and continuity in juvenile justice within the contexts of the ascendancy of conservative constitutionalism and Americans' embrace of mass incarceration as a penal strategy. An epilogue about Redding v. Safford--a 2009 decision involving a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, also from Arizona, who was forced to undress because she was suspected of hiding drugs in her underwear--reminds us why Gault is of lasting consequence. Gault is a story of revolutionary constitutionalism that also reveals the tenacity of localism in American legal history. Tanenhaus's meticulous explication raises troubling questions about how local communities treat their children as it confirms the importance of the Supreme Court's decisions about the constitutional rights of minors.
Defining Documents in American History: Human Rights Provides a two volume set that explores the development of human rights in history and their spread around the world in the modern era.
Defining Documents in World History: Religious Freedom and Religious Prosecution (2 Volumes) Provides a two volume set that traces the evolution of both religious freedoms and persecutions around the globe, from religious revolts and struggles for independence in the ancient world, to the Holocaust during World War II, to current genocides and American legal battles surrounding the First Amendment.
Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans No one could have predicted that the night of September 17,1998, would be anything but routine in Houston, Texas. Even the call to police that a black man was "going crazy with a gun" was hardly unusual in this urban setting. Nobody could have imagined that the arrest of two men for a minor criminal offense would reverberate in American constitutional law, exposing a deep malignity in our judicial system and challenging the traditional conception of what makes a family. Indeed, when Harris County sheriff's deputies entered the second-floor apartment, there was no gun. Instead, they reported that they had walked in on John Lawrence and Tyron Garner having sex in Lawrence's bedroom. So begins Dale Carpenter's "gripping and brilliantly researched" Flagrant Conduct, a work nine years in the making that transforms our understanding of what we thought we knew about Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark Supreme Court decision of 2003 that invalidated America's sodomy laws.
Is Gun Ownership a Right?
Nobody Is Protected Late one July night in 2020, armed men, identified only by the word POLICE written across their uniforms, began snatching supporters of Black Lives Matter off the street in Portland, Oregon, and placing them in unmarked vans. These mysterious actions were not carried out by local law enforcement or even right-wing terrorists, but by the U.S. Border Patrol. Nobody Is Protected is the untold story of how, through a series of landmark but largely unknown decisions, the Supreme Court has dramatically curtailed the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution in service of policing borders.
Private Lives, Public Conflicts: Battles Over Gay Rights in American Communities Should an employer be required to cover a gay employee's partner under its insurance plan? Do schools have a responsibility to protect gay students from harassment and violence? Is public safety compromised if police and fire departments openly hire gay employees? These are a few of the contentious questions at the center of the struggle for -- and against -- gay rights in cities large and small across the country.
Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America An enlightening, intensely researched examination of violations of the constitutional principles that preserve individual rights and civil liberties from courtrooms to classrooms. With telling anecdote and detail, Pulitzer Prize-winner David K. Shipler explores the territory where the Constitution meets everyday America, where legal compromises--before and since 9/11--have undermined the criminal justice system's fairness, enhanced the executive branch's power over citizens and immigrants, and impaired some of the freewheeling debate and protest essential in a constitutional democracy. Shipler demonstrates how the violations tamper with America's safety in unexpected ways. While a free society takes risks to observe rights, denying rights creates other risks. A suspect's right to silence may deprive police of a confession, but a forced confession is often false.
The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, Black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for Black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different family histories, religious affiliations, and class backgrounds, inspired each other throughout their adult lives. Malcolm's push to connect pan-Africanism to an international human rights agenda mirrored the "beloved community" that King eloquently articulated at the March on Washington. Similarly, the anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns of King's final years unleashed a stinging critique of racism, militarism, and materialism that echoed Malcolm's impassioned anti-colonialism. In short, King was more revolutionary, and Malcolm more pragmatic, than we've been told. The Sword and the Shield is the definitive history of not only the revolutionary lives and political impact of these leaders, but also of the movement and era they came to define
The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First One of our preeminent historians of race and democracy argues that the period since 2008 has marked nothing less than America's Third Reconstruction. In The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. Joseph draws revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol. America's first and second Reconstructions fell tragically short of their grand aims. Our Third Reconstruction offers a new chance to achieve Black dignity and citizenship at last--an opportunity to choose hope over fear.
Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968 Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. In Waging a Good War, Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America's greatest moral revolution--the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s--and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.'s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to note the surprising affinities between that ethos and the organized pursuit of success at war. The greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century, he stresses, were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization--the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the movement's triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance - involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement's adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool--the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement's later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America's civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change--and one that offers vital lessons for our own time.
The Young Crusaders: The Untold Story of the Children and Teenagers Who Galvanized the Civil Rights Movement Filling a gap in the scholarship of American history, V.P. Franklin crafts the first full-length history of the children and teen activists who participated in and led key protests during the Civil Rights Movement"--Provided by publisher Some of the most iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement are those of young people engaged in social activism: the Little Rock Nine being escorted into Central High School in 1957 by soldiers, or children and teenagers being attacked in 1963 by police in Birmingham with dogs and water hoses. While the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the NAACP, and the Student Nonvoilent Coordinating Committee have been well chronicled, the crucial roles of children and teens are now placed at the forefront in The Young Crusaders. V.P. Franklin delivers a thorough reexamination of the efforts of children and teenagers to challenge legal segregation, employment discrimination, educational inequality, and racialized violence beginning in the 1930s. His groundbreaking narrative draws on examples in nearly fifty cities and fifteen states, from Alabama to Wisconsin. Franklin details the student activism behind the successful civil rights campaigns that brought about the end of Jim Crow practices throughout the nation. For instance, the largest civil rights demonstration in US history was not the famous March on Washington in August 1963 but the system-wide school boycott in New York City on February 3, 1964, when over 360,000 elementary and secondary school students went on strike and thousands attended "freedom schools." Multiracial community groups organized the school boycotts in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities, and African American, Puerto Rican, and white students participated, calling for the desegregation of public and private education and public accomodations. In addition, children and teenagers mounted their own walkouts, marches, and civil rights demonstrations demanding "Freedom Now." This account of the courageous actions of these unheralded young people fundamentally transforms how we understand the Civil Rights Movement and serves as a playbook for youth-oriented protest movements such as the Climate Strike, March for Our Lives, and Black Lives Matter, reigniting in the twenty-first century the next wave of social and political activism.