The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. They established the principle of birthright citizenship and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of all citizens. The federal government, not the states, was charged with enforcement, reversing the priority of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States. Eric Foner's compact, insightful history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre-Civil War mass meetings of African-American "colored citizens" and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late nineteenth century. A series of momentous decisions by the Supreme Court narrowed the rights guaranteed in the amendments, while the state actively undermined them. The Jim Crow system was the result. Again today there are serious political challenges to birthright citizenship, voting rights, due process, and equal protection of the law. Like all great works of history, this one informs our understanding of the present as well as the past: knowledge and vigilance are always necessary to secure our basic rights. --

An analysis by recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court's supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution.

This national bestseller is not only the guiding “centerpiece of a robust new grassroots machinery” (Rolling Stone), it is the story of democracy under threat. It’s the story of a movement rising up to respond. And it’s a story of what comes next. Shortly after Trump’s 2016 election, two outraged former congressional staffers wrote and posted a tactical guide to resisting the Trump agenda. This Google Doc entitled “Indivisible” was meant to be read by friends and family. No one could have predicted what happened next. It went viral, sparking the creation of thousands of local Indivisible groups in red, blue, and purple states, mobilizing millions of people who had never engaged in politics before. Between one and two million were inspired—they canvassed, caravanned, shouted back, and ran for office. Proof of concept: A blue 116th House of Representatives. In We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, the directors of Indivisible tell the story of the movement. They offer a behind-the-scenes look at how change comes to Washington, whether Washington wants it or not. And they explain how we’ll win the coming fight for the future of American democracy. We Are Indivisible isn’t a book of platitudes about hope; it’s a steely-eyed guide to people power—how to find it, how to build it, and how to use it to save our country. *All proceeds to the author go to Indivisible’s Save Democracy Fund

Written in the wake of the 2014 Gaza War this concise volume sets out Chomskyâ€s and Pappéâ€s views on the conflict in the region. Discussions providing historical context and opinions on what might lie in the future are followed by six essays that reflect in more detail on issues such as the role of the international community.

"The U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated the right to abortion and is revisiting other fundamental questions today--about voting rights, affirmative action, gun laws, and much more. Once-arcane theories of constitutional interpretation are profoundly affecting the lives of all Americans. In this brief and urgent book, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein provides a lively introduction to competing approaches to interpreting the Constitution--and argues that the only way to choose one is to ask whether it would change American life for the better or worse. If a method of interpretation would eliminate the right of privacy, allow racial segregation, or obliterate free speech, it would be unacceptable for that reason. But some Supreme Court justices are committed to 'originalism,' arguing that the meaning of the Constitution is settled by how it was publicly understood when it was ratified. Originalists insist that their approach is dictated by the Constitution. That, Sunstein argues, is a big mistake. The Constitution doesn't contain instructions for its own interpretation. Any approach to constitutional interpretation needs to be defended in terms of its broad effects--what it does to our rights and our institutions. It must respect those rights and institutions--and safeguard the conditions for democracy itself"--

The CIA chief, Leon Panetta, calls drones the ‘only game in town’. The figures bear him out. Between 2004 and 2012, the US reportedly conducted over 350 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing between 2,600 and 3,400 people. Drone strikes have killed more than 200 children alone in Pakistan and Yemen. In 2000, the Americans had fewer than fifty aerial drones; ten years later, it had a fleet of nearly 7,500, and the US Air Force now trains more drone ‘pilots’ than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Drones are already a $ 5 billion business in the US alone. American activist Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange, provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who controls these unmanned places, and what are the legal and moral implications of their use. Benjamin also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons.

"Many of the great legislative achievements of the past sixty years stem from FDR's 1944 State of the Union address. This book that argues for a new vision of FDR and of constitutional history"-- Provided by publisher.

This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe - the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether sex workers rights' activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved.

If a country’s gross domestic product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? if we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? in this powerful critique, martha nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect for the past twenty-five years, nussbaum has been working on an alternative model to assess human development: the capabilities approach she and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: what is each person actually able to do and to be? what real opportunities are available to them? the capabilities approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works creating capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human developm

"In a richly reported, behind-the-scenes portrait of the Supreme Court and the secret world of its nine justices, veteran national journalist David A. Kaplan shows how the Court, far from being the "least dangerous branch" of government, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, has become in many respects the most dangerous branch, subverting democracy and betraying the Constitution. Never before has the Supreme Court been more central to American politics. A sizable percentage of voters in the most recent presidental election chose a candidate based largely on who they thought Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would nominate to replace the fiery Antonin Scalia. In the face of a dysfunctional and paralyzed Congress, it is the Court, rather than our elected officials, that decides such divisive issues as gerrymandering, abortion, gun rights, voting rights, same sex marriage, immigration, and campaign finance. In a sweeping narrative that examines the personalities and quirks of the Justices, The Most Dangerous Branch shows how, going as far back as Roe v Wade, the Court has re-shaped America's political and social landscape in key cases on the left and the right. As much as the Chief Justice claims to be only calling balls and strikes, in fact the Court has not hesitated to put its collective thumb on the scale of justice to swing the law in the majority's direction. As a result, nine nonelected life-tenured lawyers, trained at but two elite universities (Harvard and Yale) have taken it upon themselves to decide the fate and direction of the nation. Kaplan's book gets at the heart of who these Justices are, and uncovers their personal agendas -- including that of Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's impatient and quietly radical new appointee. And with the retirement of even a single justice, the Court could, under Trump and a filibuster-proof Senate, be transformed into a insurrmountable conservative voting block that will reign even more supreme over America for a generation"--

The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights expresses the credo that all human beings are created free and equal. But not until 1995 did the United Nations declare that women's rights to be human rights, and bring gender issues into the global arena for the first time. The subordination of indigenous and minority women, ethnic cleansing, and the struggle for reproductive rights are some of the most pressing issues facing women worldwide. Women, Gender, and Human Rights is the first collection of essays that encompass a global perspective on women and a wide range of issues, including political and domestic violence, education, literacy, and reproductive rights. Most of the articles were written expressly for this volume by internationally known experts in the fields of government, bioethics, medicine, public affairs, literature, history, anthropology, law, and psychology.

Americans resorted to arms in 1775 not to establish new liberties but to defend old ones, explains constitutional historian Leonard W. Levy in this fascinating history of the origins of the Bill of Rights. Unencumbered by a rigid class system, an arbitrary government, or a single established church squelching dissent, colonial Americans understood freedom in a far more comprehensive and liberal way than the English, Levy shows. He offers here a panoramic view of the liberties secured by the first ten amendments to the Constitution--a penetrating analysis of the background of the Bill of Rights the meanings of each provision of the amendments. In colonial America, political theory, law, and religion all taught that government was limited. Yet the framing and ratification of the Bill of Rights--in effect a bill of restraints upon the national government--was by no means assured. Levy illuminates the behind-the-scenes maneuverings, public rhetoric, and political motivations that led to each provision. The omission of a bill of rights in the original constitution presented the most serious obstacle to its adoption, despite Federalist claims that a bill of rights was unnecessary. Opponents of the Constitution claimed that inclusion of only some liberties--such as the right to habeas corpus and freedom from ex post facto laws--meant that all other liberties would be lost. But, Levy demonstrates, the people of the United States, aided by a persistent James Madison and by traditions of freedom, had the good sense to support both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Nixon White House in 1972 about the Bureau's surveillance of John Lennon, he began by explaining that Lennon was a "former member of the Beatles singing group." When a copy of this letter arrived in response to Jon Wiener's 1981 Freedom of Information request, the entire text was withheld—along with almost 200 other pages—on the grounds that releasing it would endanger national security. This book tells the story of the author's remarkable fourteen-year court battle to win release of the Lennon files under the Freedom of Information Act in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. With the publication of Gimme Some Truth , 100 key pages of the Lennon FBI file are available—complete and unexpurgated, fully annotated and presented in a "before and after" format. Lennon's file was compiled in 1972, when the war in Vietnam was at its peak, when Nixon was facing reelection, and when the "clever Beatle" was living in New York and joining up with the New Left and the anti-war movement. The Nixon administration's efforts to "neutralize" Lennon are the subject of Lennon's file. The documents are reproduced in facsimile so that readers can see all the classification stamps, marginal notes, blacked out passages and—in some cases—the initials of J. Edgar Hoover. The file includes lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges. Fascinating, engrossing, at points hilarious and absurd, Gimme Some Truth documents an era when rock music seemed to have real political force and when youth culture challenged the status quo in Washington. It also delineates the ways the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations fought to preserve government secrecy, and highlights the legal strategies adopted by those who have challenged it.

The Civil Rights Revolution carries Bruce Ackerman’s sweeping reinterpretation of constitutional history into the era beginning with Brown v. Board of Education . From Rosa Parks’s courageous defiance, to Martin Luther King’s resounding cadences in “I Have a Dream,” to Lyndon Johnson’s leadership of Congress, to the Supreme Court’s decisions redefining the meaning of equality, the movement to end racial discrimination decisively changed our understanding of the Constitution. “The Civil Rights Act turns 50 this year, and a wave of fine books accompanies the semicentennial. Ackerman’s is the most ambitious; it is the third volume in an ongoing series on American constitutional history called We the People . A professor of law and political science at Yale, Ackerman likens the act to a constitutional amendment in its significance to the country’s legal development.” —Michael O’Donnell, The Atlantic “Ackerman weaves political theory with historical detail, explaining how the civil rights movement evolved from revolution to mass movement and then to statutory law...This fascinating book takes a new look at a much-covered topic.” —Becky Kennedy, Library Journal

"A stunningly original look at the forgotten Jewish political roots of contemporary international human rights, told through the moving stories of five key activists The year 2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remained tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today. In this riveting account, James Loeffler explores this controversial history through the stories of five remarkable Jewish founders of international human rights, following them from the prewar shtetls of eastern Europe to the postwar United Nations, a journey that includes the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, the founding of Amnesty International, and the UN resolution of 1975 labeling Zionism as racism. The result is a book that challenges long-held assumptions about the history of human rights and offers a startlingly new perspective on the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." --

"The issue of constitutional authority, and more particularly the plurality of claims to legal and constitutional authority, has been a dominant theme of European Union legal scholarship in recent years. The resonance of the topic is evident in many of the major EU developments of the past decade: the momentous eastwards enlargement, the gambit of the un-ratified Constitutional Treaty; the growing number of national constitutional court challenges to EU authority claims; the likely EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights; and finally the rulings of the European Court of Justice on the relationship of EU law to the international legal order"--

"In a groundbreaking book based on six years of reporting, leading expert on humanitarian aid and development David Rieff offers a review of whether the end of extreme poverty and widespread hunger are within our reach. Some of the most brilliant scientists, world politicians, and development experts agree that the eradication of hunger is an essential task for the new millennium. Yet in the last decade, the prices of wheat, soy and rice have soared. This has condemned the hundreds of millions of the world's population who live on less than one dollar per day to a state of hunger and insecurity. Rieff searches for the causes of this food security crisis, as well as what lies behind the failures to respond to disaster: failures to address climate change, poor governance, and misguided optimism. Rieff cautions against the increased privatization of aid, as well as the interventions of celebrity campaigners, whose business-led solutions rob development of political urgency. He dismisses the idle hope of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that food scarcity can be solved by technological innovation alone. The path ahead, Rieff reminds us, demands we rethink the fundamental causes of the world's grotesque inequalities and understand that what is at stake is a political challenge we are failing to confront".

Provocative essays from one of America's most important cultural critics Think Again gathers one hundred of the best of Stanley Fish's provocative New York Times essays, pieces that have generated passionate discussion and debate. Addressing controversies about such hot-button topics as atheism, affirmative action, free speech, identity politics, guns, and postmodernism, Fish dissects the arguments put forth by different sides in order to explain how their arguments work or don't work. Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly, and provide all the powerful intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish, one of America's most influential thinkers.

Government's ever-increasing participation in communication processes, Mark Yudof argues, threatens key democratic values that the First Amendment was designed to protect. Government control over the exchange of ideas and information would be inconsistent with citizen autonomy, informed consent, and a balanced and mutually responsive relationship between citizens and their government. Yet the danger of government dominance must be weighed against the necessary role of government in furthering democratic values by proposing and promotion policies and by disseminating information and educating citizens. Restraints on government's ability to control communications processes are desirable, but excessive or inappropriate restrictions threaten democracy. Professor Yudof identifies a number of formal and informal checks on government as disseminator, withholder, and controller of ideas and information. Where more controls are needed, the strengthening of pluralism and legislative oversight is generally the answer. Constitutional redress in the courts should be sought only in extreme instances, he cautions, to avoid judicial interference with legitimate policy objectives.