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John Stuart Mill is the father of modern liberalism. His most remembered work, On Liberty, which was published in 1859, changed the course of the liberal tradition. What is less well-known is that his ideas have profoundly influenced the American constitutional rights tradition of the latter half of the twentieth century. Mill's'harm principle'inspired the constitutional right to privacy recognized in Griswold v Connecticut, Roe vs Wade and other cases. His defense of freedom of expression influenced Justices Holmes, Brandeis, Douglas, Brennan and others and led to greatly expanded freedom of speech in the twentieth century. Finally, Mill was an ardent feminist whose last important work, The Subjection of Women, was a full-scale and, for its time, radical defense of complete gender equality. This is a book for lawyers who want to understand the intellectual origins of modern constitutional rights, and for political philosophers interested in the constitutional implications of Mill's conception of freedom.

The rights revolution in the United States consisted of both sweeping changes in constitutional doctrines and landmark legislative reform, followed by decades of innovative implementation in every branch of the federal government - Congress, agencies, and the courts. In recent years, a growing number of political scientists have sought to integrate studies of the rights revolution into accounts of the contemporary American state. In The Rights Revolution Revisited, a distinguished group of political scientists and legal scholars explore the institutional dynamics, scope, and durability of the rights revolution. By offering an inter-branch analysis of the development of civil rights laws and policies that features the role of private enforcement, this volume enriches our understanding of the rise of the'civil rights state'and its fate in the current era.

Human rights can be defined as the basic fundamental rights inherent to all human beings in any society. How these rights are made available and protected in individual countries is an area of much study and debate. Focusing on the significance of human rights in American law and politics, this book seeks to understand when, where, and how American law recognizes and responds to claims made in the name of human rights. How are they used by social movements as they advance rights claims? When are human rights claims accommodated and resisted? Do particular kinds of human rights claims have greater resonance domestically than others? What cultural and psychological factors impede the development of a human rights culture in the United States? This is an exciting and engaging volume that will appeal to a broad range of scholars, practitioners, and students interested in the study of human rights.

Civil Rights in American Law, History, and Politics charts the ambiguous and contested meanings of civil rights in law and culture and confronts important questions about race in contemporary America. How important is civil rights in America's story of possibility and change? How has it transformed the very meaning of citizenship and identity in American culture? Why does the subject of race continue to haunt the American imagination and play such a large role in political and legal debates? Do affirmative action and multiculturalism promise a way out of racial polarization, or do they sharpen and deepen it? Are there new and better ways to frame our commitment to equal justice? This book brings together the work of five distinguished scholars to critically assess the place of civil rights in the American story. It offers different ways of talking about civil rights and frames through which we can address issues of civil rights in the future.

This exhaustively researched book presents the history behind a revolution in American liberty: the 1868 addition of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It follows the evolution in public understanding of'the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States', from the early years of the Constitution to the election of 1866. For 92 years nothing in the American Constitution prevented states from abridging freedom of speech, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or denying the right of peaceful assembly. The suppression of freedom in the southern states convinced the Reconstruction Congress and supporters of the Union to add an amendment forcing the states to respect the rights announced in the first eight amendments. But rather than eradicate state autonomy, the people embraced the Fourteenth Amendment that expanded the protections of the Bill of Rights and preserved the Constitution's original commitment to federalism and the principle of limited national power.

This book is a history of the civil liberties records of American presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama. It examines the full range of civil liberties issues: First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, press and assembly; due process; equal protection, including racial justice, women's rights, and lesbian and gay rights; privacy rights, including reproductive freedom; and national security issues. The book argues that presidents have not protected or advanced civil liberties, and that several have perpetrated some of the worst violations. Some Democratic presidents (Wilson and Roosevelt), moreover, have violated civil liberties as badly as some Republican presidents (Nixon and Bush). This is the first book to examine the full civil liberties records of each president (thus, placing a president's record on civil rights with his record on national security issues), and also to compare the performance on particular issues of all the presidents covered.

This book approaches a variety of social and political issues that have become highly polarized and resistant to compromise by examining them through a population-based public health perspective. The topics included are some of the most contentious: abortion and reproductive rights; end-of-life issues, including the right to die and the treatment of pain; the connection between racism and poor health outcomes for African-Americans; the right of same-sex couples to marry; the toll of gun violence and how to reduce it; domestic violence and how the criminal justice model fails to deal with it effectively; and how tort compensation and punitive damages can further public health goals. People at every point along the political spectrum will find the book enlightening and informative. Written by eight authors, all of whom have cross-disciplinary expertise, this book shifts the focus away from the point of view of rights, politics, or morality and examines the effect of laws and policies from the perspective of public health and welfare.

In this important book, Michael J. Perry examines three of the most disputed constitutional issues of our time: capital punishment, state laws banning abortion, and state policies denying the benefit of law to same-sex unions. The author, a leading constitutional scholar, explains that if a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court believes that a law violates the Constitution, it does not necessarily follow that the Court should rule that the law is unconstitutional. In cases in which it is argued that a law violates the Constitution, the Supreme Court must decide which of two importantly different questions it should address: is the challenged law unconstitutional? Is the lawmakers'judgment that the challenged law is constitutional a reasonable judgment? Perry not only illuminates moral controversies that implicate one or more constitutionally entrenched human rights, but also the fundamental question of the Supreme Court's proper role in adjudicating such controversies.

What is the source of rights? Rights have been grounded in divine agency, human nature, and morally justified claims, and have been used to assess the moral status of legal and customary social practices. The orthodoxy is that some of our rights are a species of unrecognized or natural rights. For example, black slaves in antebellum America were said to have such rights, and this was taken to provide a basis for establishing the immorality of slavery. Derrick Darby exposes the main shortcomings of the orthodox conception of the source of rights and proposes a radical alternative. He draws on the legacy of race and racism in the USA to argue that all rights are products of social recognition. This bold, lucid and meticulously argued book will inspire readers to rethink the central role assigned to rights in moral, political, and legal theory as well as in everyday evaluative discourse.

In the aftermath of a terrorist attack political stakes are high: legislators fear being seen as lenient or indifferent and often grant the executive broader authorities without thorough debate. The judiciary's role, too, is restricted: constitutional structure and cultural norms narrow the courts'ability to check the executive at all but the margins. The dominant'Security or Freedom'framework for evaluating counterterrorist law thus fails to capture an important characteristic: increased executive power that shifts the balance between branches of government. This book re-calculates the cost of counterterrorist law to the United Kingdom and the United States, arguing that the damage caused is significantly greater than first appears. Donohue warns that the proliferation of biological and nuclear materials, together with willingness on the part of extremists to sacrifice themselves, may drive each country to take increasingly drastic measures with a resultant shift in the basic structure of both states.

Provides a detailed exposition of violations of international law authorized and abetted by secret memos, authorizations and orders of the Bush administration. It describes why several executive claims were in error, what illegal authorizations were given, what illegal interrogation tactics were approved, and what illegal transfers and secret detentions occurred. It offers the most thorough documentation of cases demonstrating that the President is bound by the laws of war; that decisions to detain persons, decide their status, and mistreat them are subject to judicial review during the war; and that the commander-in-chief power is subject to restraints by Congress. Special military commissions contemplated by President Bush are analyzed along with the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan concerning their illegal structure and procedures, as well as problems created by the 2006 Military Commission Act.

The United States faces the realistic and indefinite threat of terrorist attack with nuclear weapons. Whether the United States is successful in preventing such an attack will depend on whether we effectively wield the instruments of security. It will also depend on whether we effectively manage national security processes and apply the law in a manner that both enhances security and upholds our core values. As a result, lawyers, not just presidents, generals, and spies, will decide the outcome of this conflict. This book, first published in 2007, is essential for anyone wanting an understanding of national security law and process. The book includes chapters on constitutional law, the use of force, and homeland security, presented in the context of today's threats and as applied to issues like rendition and electronic surveillance.