Constitutional Amendments

Constitutional Amendments
Author: Tom Pendergast
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001
Genre: Civil rights
ISBN: 9780787648657

Provides discussion and explanation of the process by which the Constitution of the United States has been amended and expanded in response to changes in American society.

Flag Burning

Flag Burning
Author: Michael Welch (Ph. D.)
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 244
Release:
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780202366128

Responses to flag burning as a particular form of street protest tend to polarize into two camps: one holding the view that action of this sort is constitutionally protected protest; the other, that it is subversive and criminal activity. In this well-researched and richly documented volume, Welch examines the collision of these ideologies, and shows the relevance of sociological concepts to a deeper understanding of such forms of protest. In exploring social control of political protest in the United States, this volume embarks on an in-depth examination of flag desecration and efforts to criminalize that particular form of dissent. It seeks to examine the sociological process facilitating the criminalization of protest by attending to moral enterprises, civil religion, authoritarian aesthetics, and the ironic nature of social control. Flag burning is a potent symbolic gesture conveying sharp criticism of the state. Many American believe that flag desecration emerged initially during the Vietnam War era, but the history of this caustic form of protest can be traced to the period leading up to the Civil War. The act of torching Old Glory differs qualitatively from other forms of defiance. With this distinction in mind, attempts to penalize and deter flag desecration transcend the utilitarian function of regulating public protest. Despite popular claims that American society is built on genuine consensus, the flag-burning controversy brings to light the contentious nature of U.S. democracy and its ambivalence toward free expression. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is often viewed as one of the more unpopular additions to the Bill of Rights. One constitutional commentator underscores this point by noting that the First Amendment gives citizens the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Flag Burning is a well-written, informative volume suitable for courses in deviance, social problems, social movements, mass communication, criminology, and political science, as well as in sociology of law and legal studies.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate
Author: Anthony Lewis
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 1458758389

More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.

The Soul of the First Amendment

The Soul of the First Amendment
Author: Floyd Abrams
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0300190883

A lively and controversial overview by the nation's most celebrated First Amendment lawyer of the unique protections for freedom of speech in America The right of Americans to voice their beliefs without government approval or oversight is protected under what may well be the most honored and least understood addendum to the US Constitution--the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams, a noted lawyer and award-winning legal scholar specializing in First Amendment issues, examines the degree to which American law protects free speech more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is the case anywhere else in the world, including democratic nations such as Canada and England. In this lively, powerful, and provocative work, the author addresses legal issues from the adoption of the Bill of Rights through recent cases such as Citizens United. He also examines the repeated conflicts between claims of free speech and those of national security occasioned by the publication of classified material such as was contained in the Pentagon Papers and was made public by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.

Our Undemocratic Constitution

Our Undemocratic Constitution
Author: Sanford Levinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2008
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0195365577

Levinson here argues that too many of our Constitution's provisions promote either unjust or ineffective government. Under the existing blueprint, we can neither rid ourselves of incompetent presidents nor assure continuity of government following catastrophic attacks. Worse, our Constitution is the most difficult to amend or update in the world. Levinson boldly challenges the Americans to undertake a long overdue public discussion on how they might best reform this most hallowed document and construct a constitution adequate to our democratic values.

Rights from Wrongs

Rights from Wrongs
Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2004
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780465017133

A noted legal scholar examines the source of human rights, arguing that rights are the result of particular experiences with injustice and looking at the implications in terms of the right to privacy, voting rights, and other rights.

The First Amendment, Freedom of Speech

The First Amendment, Freedom of Speech
Author: Vikram Amar
Publisher: Bill of Rights
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2009
Genre: Law
ISBN:

This volume collects, edits and presents some of the most important classic and cutting-edge thinking on the constitutional freedom of speech. At a time when America is trying to export democracy abroad and preserve it at home against a backdrop of international security concerns, figuring out how society should permit its citizens to identify and represent themselves and come together to deliberate collectively is arguably more crucial now than ever before.