Sections within this essay:
The Declaration of Independence states that all individuals have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." When the United States Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, it further established those rights for Americans. Anyone born or living in the United States would have the right to speak or write freely on any topic, the right to choose any religion, the right to assemble peacefully for any purpose, and the right to a trial by jury. More that two centuries later, the Constitution still guarantees those rights.
The Constitution was hardly a perfect reflection of true civil liberties; it would be nearly a hundred years before slaves were freed and more than fifty years after that before women could vote in national elections. What has made the Constitution work is its ability to accommodate social justice and the fact that there have always been people willing to fight for civil liberties.
There have been times when people questioned whether Americans needed as many civil liberties as they have. In times of war, for example, debates over whether certain liberties must be curtailed always take place. During World War II, the federal government placed 110,000 Japanese Americans, two thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, in internment camps. The measure was deemed necessary on account of the possible danger of espionage and infiltration of enemy forces. In hindsight, the government realized that this was an egregiously mistaken action (many Japanese American' in fact, had served bravely during the war in the U.S. armed forces), and Congress issued an official apology in 1993. After the war ended, fear of Communism caused state and federal governments to pass legislation requiring certain government employees to take "loyalty oaths" assuring that they were not Communists or members of like-minded groups. The issue reached the boiling point when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin claimed that there were Communists working in the federal government. McCarthy launched a series of Senate hearings, and people who were accused of being Communists often lost their jobs. The Communist scare burned itself out, but not before destroying many lives.
Those who feel that civil liberties can be curtailed under special circumstances will explain that special circumstances call for special measures. Civil libertarians will remind them that there is always a danger that once the special circumstances end, there is no guarantee that the self-imposed restrictions will also end.
Many people mistakenly believe that civil libertarianism is the same as political liberalism. Civil libertar-
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are commonly known as the Bill of Rights. They set the groundwork for what we today consider our basic civil liberties. These amendments guarantee the following rights:
Other key amendments guaranteeing civil rights and liberties include the Thirteenth Amendment (which prohibits slavery), the Fourteenth Amendment (which granted citizenship to former slaves), the Fifteenth Amendment (which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied on account of race), and the Nineteenth Amendment (which granted women the right to vote). The Twenty-Fourth Amendment, ratified in 1962, prohibited the imposition of a voters' poll tax on any individual
The Constitution was designed so that it could be amended, but the amendment process is by design not easy. Both houses of Congress must approve a proposed amendment by a two-thirds majority, and the amendment must then be ratified by three quarters of the states within a specific time frame (typically seven years). This procedure keeps the Constitution from becoming bogged down with scores of frivolous or narrow-issue amendments. This can work for or against the interests of civil libertarians. The proposed "Equal Rights Amendment" was passed by Congress in 1972 but failed to get ratified even after the ratification period was extended by three years. A proposed amendment in 2004 that would have imposed a constitutional prohibition on same-sex marriage did not receive enough Congressional support to be voted into existence.
The best known civil liberties organization in the United States is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Founded in 1920, the ACLU works at the national, state, and local level through the courts, legislatures, and communities to ensure individual rights and liberties are not abridged. The ACLU has branches across the United States and maintains an active network of professionals and volunteers. The ACLU challenges legislation and any government action that it feels endanger civil rights.
The list of issues the ACLU handles is quite comprehensive: discrimination, religious freedom, privacy, free speech, prisoners' rights, immigrants' rights, rights of the poor, the death penalty—to name a few. The ACLU initiates lawsuits and often offers to defend those whose civil liberties have been challenged. In addition, the ACLU also issues "friend of the court" briefs for cases that go before the courts.
One of the ACLU's earliest battles was the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. Tennessee had enacted legislation prohibiting the teaching of evolution and the ACLU decided to seek out a test case to argue for free speech. John T. Scopes volunteered to be the test case, and the ACLU agreed to provide legal counsel. The lead attorney was the noted defense lawyer Clarence Darrow, who argued vigorously in defense of Scopes' right to teach evolution. Although Scopes was convicted and fined $100, the case brought the issue, and the ACLU, to national prominence.
A more recent case, one that was a victory for the ACLU, was ACLU v. Reno. The ACLU challenged the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which prohibited "indecent" speech over the Internet. The act was too broad and sweeping, claimed the ACLU, and threatened to endanger the free exchange of ideas online. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed and voted unanimously that the act was unconstitutional.
Many people think of the ACLU as a liberal organization aimed promoting a leftist agenda. In fact, the ACLU has defended people and institutions of all political beliefs. For example, the organization has opposed the creation of "hate speech" regulations on college and university campuses. The argument is that even hateful speech is protected under the Constitution (unlike hate-based actions), and a better way to deal with hate speech is to find its root causes instead of merely banning it.
Although the ACLU is the best known and most prominent civil liberties organization, other national and local groups also challenge what they see as the erosion of civil liberties. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), for example, does much of the same legal and advocacy group that the ACLU does. (The NYCLU was actually founded in 1951 as the New York affiliate of the ACLU.) The NYCLU focuses on civil liberties issues in New York, including issues surrounding security measures put in place since the September 11 attacks. A typical example is a federal suit filed in January 2006 by the NYCLU and the New York University Civil Rights Clinic on behalf of a filmmaker who was detained in May 2005 for filming on a Manhattan street. He was warned that he needed a permit, but when he applied for one some months later his application was denied without explanation. The lawsuit filed by the NYCLU claimed that the film-permit requirement is unconstitutional.
People for the American Way, founded in 1980 by television and film producer Norman Lear, works to protect civil liberties by advocating with government agencies, providing statistics and information on civil rights activities across the country, and educating the public on civil liberties issues.
The American Library Association (ALA), which has more than 64,000 members across the country, works to ensure high quality information in libraries, and public access to that information. The ALA, through its Office for Intellectual Freedom, provides information on legislation and government activity that can affect how libraries disseminate information. Its opposition to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT (see below) is one example. ALA also created guidelines for librarians on how to comply with the Children' Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires libraries to use filters to keep minors from accessing adult material.
Although civil liberties groups have actively advocated on behalf of civil rights over the decades, and although they have had many successes, they are quick to point out that vigilance is the key to ensuring civil liberties are not allowed to slide. Below are some typical issues from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
School boards regularly attempt to ban books, with classics such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Of Mice and Men among the most frequently challenged, according to ALA. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the Harry Potter series of books, which tell the story of a young aspiring wizard and his adventures in wizard school, have become a focal point for many who oppose the focus on wizardry and magic.
School boards do not have an absolute right to remove books from school library shelves. In the case of Board of Education v. Pico., decided in 1982 by a 5-4 majority, the U.S. Supreme Court case ruled against the school board of Island Trees, New York, which had removed several books from the school library shelves. Included among these books were The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Best Short Stories of Negro Writers
The court noted that school boards do have discretion in what books to acquire for the school, and it could reject any works deemed to be "pervasively vulgar." But Justice William Brennan wrote that "the special characteristics of the school library make that environment especially appropriate for the recognition of First Amendment rights of students."
DNA evidence can be used to convict criminals, and it has successfully been used to exonerate individuals, some of whom were wrongly imprisoned for more than two decades. Often, when a person who has been convicted of a crime tries to get DNA evidence admitted as evidence, the courts are reluctant, despite the fact that such evidence could exonerate an innocent person.
Often, the person who is wrongly convicted of a serious crime such as murder or rape has a criminal record for petty crimes, which means a record already exists. Civil libertarians have argued that many of these individuals were arrested and convicted more as a matter of expediency than of true suspicion.
The Innocence Project, created in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York, works to exonerate people by use of postconviction DNA, in which DNA from the crime scene is tested against the accused's DNA. Often, physical evidence from a crime is kept for many years. If the evidence includes samples of blood, hair, skin, or other evidence that can include DNA, and if that evidence has not been contaminated or corrupted, it can often be used to prove a person's innocence. Between 1992 and 2005, the Innocence Project helped exonerate 173 prisoners.
On October 26, 2001, less than two months after the September 11 attacks, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). This act gave the government greater ability to seek out and combat terrorist activity in the United States. The PATRIOT Act grants the Secretary of the Treasury with new regulatory powers to fight money laundering from foreign countries in U.S. banks; secures national borders against foreign nationals who are terrorists or who support terrorism; eases restrictions on interception and surveillance of correspondence and communication that may link to terrorist activity; stiffens penalties against money laundering, counterfeiting, charity fraud, and similar crimes; and creates new crimes and penalties for such acts as harboring terrorists and giving terrorists material support.
Civil liberties groups complained that the PATRIOT Act, hastily passed in a national atmosphere of grief, anger, and fear, granted the federal government too much power over innocent people or to track private records. One of the most controversial provisions was Section 215 of the Act, which gives the FBI permission to examine business records for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations. Called the "library provision" because some have read it to mean that libraries will be required to turn over lists of who has checked out which books, it has been criticized as overly broad by groups such as the ACLU and the American Library Association, but also by political leaders from both parties.
Another point of contention is the existence of National Security Letters, which give federal law enforcement agencies the authority to access an individual's personal records without first seeking a warrant. Opponents of this procedure said that such letters should only be issued when a reasonable connection can be made between the subject and terrorist activity. They also said that targets of these letters should have the right to challenge them in court.
As of the end of 2005 certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act were slated to sunset by February 2006, although members of Congress were planning to seek renewal or compromise on certain sections that were controversial.
In December 2005 The New York Times published a story claiming that President George W. Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to monitor domestic telephone calls without first obtaining a warrant, as required under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The Bush Administration confirmed that the wiretaps had been authorized, but he also claimed that as president, he had the right to make such an authorization, citing a joint resolution by Congress shortly after the September 11 attacks. That resolution, President Bush said, authorized him to take whatever steps were necessary to pursue individual terrorists and terrorist groups. He insisted that his actions were legal and necessary.
Civil libertarians, however, did not see the issue the way the Bush Administration did. Groups such as the ACLU claimed that Bush had circumvented the law by failing to get the proper warrants from a special FISA court set up to serve exactly that purpose. The problem, they maintained, was not so much that the president felt compelled to conduct the wiretaps, but that he did not even inform the relevant agencies about what he was planning to do.
The rationale behind this is what makes civil liberties such a complex issue. On the one hand, the libertarians make a valid point: There was no reason for the president to bypass the FISA court, and by omitting this step he may have compromised individual freedom more than he realizes. On the other hand, the president's supporters make an equally valid observation: If just one overheard telephone conversation gives the nation a piece of valuable information (such as the location for a terrorist attack) that saves lives and destruction, the benefit is well worth the trade-off of not obtaining a warrant first.
As of January 2006 it was unclear whether Congress would declare the Bush Administration's actions illegal under existing legislation.
At War with Civil Rights and Liberties, Thomas E. Baker and John F. Stack, Jr., eds. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
Banned in the USA: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries, Herbert N. Foerstel, Greenwood Press, 2002.
In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU, Samuel Walker, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor
New York, NY 10004 USA
Phone: (212) 344-3005
URL: http://www.aclu.org/
Primary Contact: Anthony D. Romero, Executive
Director
50 East Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611 USA
Phone: (800) 545-2433
URL: http://www.ala.org
Primary Contact: Keith Michael Fiels, Executive
Director
112 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001 USA
Phone: (212) 633-6700
Fax: (212) 727-7668
URL: http://www.fair.org
2000 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036 USA
Phone: (202) 467-4999
URL: http://www.pfaw.org
Primary Contact: Ralph G. Neas, President
