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Civil Liberties In Uncivil Times: The Perilous Quest To Preserve American Freedoms, Kenneth Lasson
Civil Liberties In Uncivil Times: The Perilous Quest To Preserve American Freedoms, Kenneth Lasson
All Faculty Scholarship
The perilous quest to preserve civil liberties in uncivil times is not an easy one, but the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin should remain a beacon: "Societies that trade liberty for security end often with neither." Part I of this article is a brief history of civil liberties in America during past conflicts. Part II describes various actions taken by the government to conduct the war on terrorism - including invasions of privacy, immigration policies, deportations, profiling, pre-trial detentions, and secret military tribunals. Part III analyzes the serious Constitutional questions raised by the government's actions in fighting terrorism. The thesis throughout …
Judge Richard Posner On Civil Liberties: Pragmatic Authoritarian Libertarian, Bernard Harcourt
Judge Richard Posner On Civil Liberties: Pragmatic Authoritarian Libertarian, Bernard Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
How do you reconcile an opinion like Edmond v Goldsmith with the anti-civil-libertarian positions that Richard Posner advocates in his book Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency? The book itself is self-consciously directed against a civil libertarian framework. "The sharpest challenge to the approach that I am sketching," Posner knowingly anticipates, "will come from civil libertarians," by which he means those "adherents to the especially capacious view of civil liberties that is often advanced in litigation and lobbying by the American Civil Liberties Union." In his book, Richard Posner argues in defense of the …
The Preventive Paradigm And The Perils Of Ad Hoc Balancing, Jules Lobel
The Preventive Paradigm And The Perils Of Ad Hoc Balancing, Jules Lobel
Articles
This article addresses the claim that times of crisis require jettisoning legal rules in favor of ad hoc balancing. Part I demonstrates that the coercive preventive measures adopted by the Bush administration in carrying out the War on Terror discarded clear legal rules in favor of ad hoc balancing and relied on suspicions rather than objective evidence. Part II examines the claims of prevention paradigm supporters that ad hoc balancing is necessary in the new post-911 era in order to reach decisions that correctly weigh the values of liberty and peace versus national security. This article argues that discarding the …