Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union

Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union PDF Author: Robert Cottrell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231534035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
Roger Nash Baldwin's thirty-year tenure as director of the ACLU marked the period when the modern understanding of the Bill of Rights came into being. Spearheaded by Baldwin, volunteer attorneys of the caliber of Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, Osmond Frankel, and Edward Ennis transformed the constitutional landscape. Company police forces were dismantled. Antievolutionists were discredited (thanks to the Scopes Trial). Censorship of such works as James Joyce's Ulysses was halted. The Scottsboro Boys and Sacco and Vanzetti were defended. The right of free speech for communists and Ku Klux Klansmen alike was upheld, and the foundations were laid for an end to school segregation. Robert Cottrell's magnificent book recaptures the accomplishments and contradictions of the complicated man at the center of these events. Driven, vain, frugal, and tempestuous, America's greatest civil libertarian was initially also a staunch defender of Communist Russia, deferred to the U.S. government over the internment of Japanese Americans, and openly admired J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur. His personal relationships were equally complex. Spanning a hundred years from the late 1800s through Baldwin's death in 1981, this riveting biography is an eye-opening view of the development of the American left.

Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union

Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union PDF Author: Robert Cottrell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231534035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

Get Book Here

Book Description
Roger Nash Baldwin's thirty-year tenure as director of the ACLU marked the period when the modern understanding of the Bill of Rights came into being. Spearheaded by Baldwin, volunteer attorneys of the caliber of Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, Osmond Frankel, and Edward Ennis transformed the constitutional landscape. Company police forces were dismantled. Antievolutionists were discredited (thanks to the Scopes Trial). Censorship of such works as James Joyce's Ulysses was halted. The Scottsboro Boys and Sacco and Vanzetti were defended. The right of free speech for communists and Ku Klux Klansmen alike was upheld, and the foundations were laid for an end to school segregation. Robert Cottrell's magnificent book recaptures the accomplishments and contradictions of the complicated man at the center of these events. Driven, vain, frugal, and tempestuous, America's greatest civil libertarian was initially also a staunch defender of Communist Russia, deferred to the U.S. government over the internment of Japanese Americans, and openly admired J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur. His personal relationships were equally complex. Spanning a hundred years from the late 1800s through Baldwin's death in 1981, this riveting biography is an eye-opening view of the development of the American left.

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty PDF Author: Leigh Ann Wheeler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190206527
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
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.

Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I

Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I PDF Author: Eric Thomas Chester
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583678700
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A comprehensive history of the National Civil Liberties Bureau's role in the anti-war movement during the First World War World War I, given all the rousing “Over-There” songs and in-the-trenches films it inspired, was, at its outset, surprisingly unpopular with the American public. As opposition increased, Woodrow Wilson’s presidential administration became intent on stifling antiwar dissent. Wilson effectively silenced the National Civil Liberties Bureau, forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union. Presidential candidate Eugene Debs was jailed, and Deb’s Socialist Party became a prime target of surveillance operations, both covert and overt. Drastic as these measures were, more draconian measures were to come. In his absorbing new book, Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I, Eric Chester reveals that out of this turmoil came a heated public discussion on the theory of civil liberties – the basic freedoms that are, theoretically, untouchable by any of the three branches of the U.S. government. The famous “clear and present danger” argument of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the “balance of conflicting interest” theory of law professor Zechariah Chafee, for example, evolved to provide a rationale for courts to act as a limited restraint on autocratic actions of the government. But Chester goes further, to examine an alternative theory: civil liberties exist as absolute rights, rather than being dependent on the specific circumstances of each case. Over the years, the debate about the right to dissent has intensified and become more necessary. This fascinating book explains why, a century after the First World War – and in the era of Trump – we need to know about this.

Transforming Free Speech

Transforming Free Speech PDF Author: Mark A. Graber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520913132
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Contemporary civil libertarians claim that their works preserve a worthy American tradition of defending free-speech rights dating back to the framing of the First Amendment. Transforming Free Speech challenges the worthiness, and indeed the very existence of one uninterrupted libertarian tradition. Mark A. Graber asserts that in the past, broader political visions inspired libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. In reexamining the philosophical and jurisprudential foundations of the defense of expression rights from the Civil War to the present, he exposes the monolithic free-speech tradition as a myth. Instead of one conception of the system of free expression, two emerge: the conservative libertarian tradition that dominated discourse from the Civil War until World War I, and the civil libertarian tradition that dominates later twentieth-century argument. The essence of the current perception of the American free-speech tradition derives from the writings of Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (1885-1957), the progressive jurist most responsible for the modern interpretation of the First Amendment. His interpretation, however, deliberately obscured earlier libertarian arguments linking liberty of speech with liberty of property. Moreover, Chafee stunted the development of a more radical interpretation of expression rights that would give citizens the resources and independence necessary for the effective exercise of free speech. Instead, Chafee maintained that the right to political and social commentary could be protected independent of material inequalities that might restrict access to the marketplace of ideas. His influence enfeebled expression rights in a world where their exercise depends increasingly on economic power. Untangling the libertarian legacy, Graber points out the disjunction in the libertarian tradition to show that free-speech rights, having once been transformed, can be transformed again. Well-conceived and original in perspective, Transforming Free Speech will interest political theorists, students of government, and anyone interested in the origins of the free-speech tradition in the United States.

Sacco and Vanzetti

Sacco and Vanzetti PDF Author: Bruce Watson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780670063536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Documents the infamous 1927 trial and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, from the anarchist bombings in Washington, D.C., for which they may have been wrongfully convicted to the fierce public debates that have subsequently occurred as a result of the case.

Voices Raised in Protest

Voices Raised in Protest PDF Author: Stephanie Bangarth
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774858249
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
In this timely book, Stephanie Bangarth studies the efforts and discourse of anti-internment advocates, and discusses the various cases they brought before the courts, as well as the arguements Japanese Canadains raised in their own defence. These critiques of the governement's removal and deportation policies were seminal examples of a growing general interest in civil rights, and would provide a foundation for rights activism in subsequent years. This book offers valuable perspective for today's debates over ethnic and racial profiling, treatment of "enemy combatants," and tensions between civil-liberty and security imperatives.

From Progressive to New Dealer

From Progressive to New Dealer PDF Author: Kenneth E. Miller
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271037431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
A native Pennsylvanian, born in Meadville in 1867 and a graduate of Allegheny College, Frederic Howe dedicated his life early on to the cause of improving society and played a major role in many movements for progressive change from the early 1890s to the Second World War&—the period that Richard Hofstadter famously dubbed the &“age of reform.&” Howe was a fighter against corruption and political bosses in Cleveland; a leader in Progressive politics in New York City; a spokesman for reform through numerous books and articles and as director of the Cooper Union&’s People&’s Institute; an ardent campaigner for &“Fighting Bob&” La Follette, Woodrow Wilson, Al Smith, and Franklin D. Roosevelt; a defender of immigrants and civil liberties as commissioner of immigration for the Port of New York during the First World War; and an advocate for consumers as the first consumers counsel in the New Deal. Kenneth Miller&’s biography takes the reader behind the scenes and shows how &“the great game of politics&” was played in the age of reform.

Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920

Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920 PDF Author: David M. Rabban
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521655378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Most American historians and legal scholars incorrectly assume that controversies and litigation about free speech began abruptly during World War I. However, there was substantial debate about free speech issues between the Civil War and World War I. Important free speech controversies, often involving the activities of sex reformers and labor unions, preceded the Espionage Act of 1917. Scores of legal cases presented free speech issues to Justices Holmes and Brandeis. A significant organization, the Free Speech League, became a principled defender of free expression two decades before the establishment of the ACLU in 1920. World War I produced a major transformation in American liberalism. Progressives who had viewed constitutional rights as barriers to needed social reforms came to appreciate the value of political dissent during its wartime repression. They subsequently misrepresented the prewar judicial hostility to free speech claims and obscured prior libertarian defenses of free speech based on commitments to individual autonomy.

The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1889-1918

The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1889-1918 PDF Author: C. Roland Marchand
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400870259
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
The history of the peace movement in the United States was one of dramatic change: in the mid-IKWs it consisted of a few provincial societies; by 1912 it had become eminently respectable and listed among its members an impressive number of the nation's leaders; by 1918 it was once again weak and remote from those who formulated national policy. Along with these fluctuations went equally substantial changes of leadership and purpose that, as C. Roland Marchand emphasizes, reflected the motives of the various reform groups that successively joined and dominated the movement. Most of those who joined were not devoted solely to the cause of world peace, but saw in the programs of the movement a chance for the fulfillment of their own mare immediately relevant goals. Consequently the story of the peace movement reflects the concerns of such groups as the international lawyers who wanted a world court of arbitration as an alternative to war, the business leaders who believed that international economic stability would be endangered by war, and the labor unions who felt that the working class suffered most in war. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade

The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade PDF Author: Samantha Barbas
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022665818X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
A long-overdue biography of the legendary civil liberties lawyer—a vital and contrary figure who both defended Ulysses and fawned over J. Edgar Hoover. In the 1930s and ’40s, Morris Ernst was one of America’s best-known liberal lawyers. The ACLU’s general counsel for decades, Ernst was renowned for his audacious fights against artistic censorship. He successfully defended Ulysses against obscenity charges, litigated groundbreaking reproductive rights cases, and supported the widespread expansion of protections for sexual expression, union organizing, and public speech. Yet Ernst was also a man of stark contradictions, waging a personal battle against Communism, defending an autocrat, and aligning himself with J. Edgar Hoover’s inflammatory crusades. Arriving at a moment when issues of privacy, artistic freedom, and personal expression are freshly relevant, The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade brings this singularly complex figure into a timely new light. As Samantha Barbas’s eloquent and compelling biography makes ironically clear, Ernst both transformed free speech in America and inflicted damage to the cause of civil liberties. Drawing on Ernst’s voluminous cache of publications and papers, Barbas follows the life of this singular idealist from his pugnacious early career to his legal triumphs of the 1930s and ’40s and his later idiosyncratic zealotry. As she shows, today’s challenges to free speech and the exercise of political power make Morris Ernst’s battles as pertinent as ever.