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  3. Cambridge Studies on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

This series is a platform for original scholarship on US civil rights and civil liberties. It produces books on the normative, historical, judicial, political, and sociological contexts for understanding contemporary legislative, jurisprudential, and presidential dilemmas. The aim is to provide experts, teachers, policymakers, students, social activists, and educated citizens with in-depth analyses of theories, existing and past conditions, and constructive ideas for legal advancements.

  • General Editors: Alexander Tsesis, Florida State University

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10 results in Cambridge Studies on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Managed Dissent
  • The Law of Public Protest
  • Timothy Zick
  • Published online:
    04 May 2023
    Print publication:
    11 May 2023
  • The mass street demonstrations that followed the 2020 police murder of George Floyd were perhaps the largest in American history. These events confirmed that even in a digital era, people rely on public dissent to communicate grievances, change public discourse, and stand in collective solidarity with others. However, the demonstrations also showed that the laws surrounding public protest make public contention more dangerous, more costly, and less effective. Police fired tear gas into peaceful crowds, used physical force against compliant demonstrators, imposed broad curfews, limited the places where protesters could assemble, and abused 'unlawful assembly' and other public disorder laws. These and other pathologies epitomize a system in which public protest is tightly constrained in the name of public order. Managed Dissent argues that in order to preserve the venerable tradition of public protest in the US, we must reform several aspects of the law of public protest.

Sexual Assault on Campus
  • Defending Due Process
  • Tamara Rice Lave
  • Published online:
    23 June 2022
    Print publication:
    07 July 2022
  • Fair adjudication of campus sexual assault is one of the most divisive issues facing the United States. Victims contend that schools aren't doing enough to protect them, and accused students complain that they are presumed guilty. Sexual Assault on Campus: Defending Due Process begins by critically assessing the extent of the problem, before explaining why the criminal justice system has been unable to respond adequately. The book discusses the Department of Education's attempts to force schools to take campus assault seriously and uses original data in assessing the fairness of adjudication in the wake of the 2011 'Dear Colleague Letter.' It also includes excerpts from interviews with complainants, accused students, and administrators, which offer readers a first-hand account of these proceedings. Finally, the book provides a critical, in-depth look at the Title IX regulations put in place by the Trump Administration, with detailed recommendations for how they can be improved.

Throwing the Party
  • How the Supreme Court Puts Political Party Organizations Ahead of Voters
  • Wayne Batchis
  • Published online:
    16 June 2022
    Print publication:
    30 June 2022
  • The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on political parties is rooted in an incomplete story. Parties are, like voluntary clubs, associations of individuals that are represented by a singular organization. However, as political science has long understood, they are much more than this. Parties are also the voters who choose and support their candidates, the elected officials who govern, the activists and volunteers who contribute their time and energy, and the individual and organizational donors who open their wallets. Unfortunately, the Court's framework for understanding America's two-party system has largely ignored this broader conception of political parties. The result has been a distortion of the true nature of the two-party system, and a body of deeply inconsistent and contradictory constitutional case law. From primaries to campaign finance, partisan gerrymandering to ballot access, law and politics scholar Wayne Batchis interrogates, scrutinizes, and offers a proposed solution to this problematic jurisprudence.

Commercial Speech as Free Expression
  • The Case for First Amendment Protection
  • Martin H. Redish
  • Published online:
    21 May 2021
    Print publication:
    10 June 2021
  • For many years, commercial speech was summarily excluded from First Amendment protection, without reason or logic. Starting in the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court began to extend protection but it remained strictly limited. In recent years, that protection has expanded, but both Court and scholars have refused to consider treating commercial speech as the First Amendment equivalent of traditionally protected expressive categories such as political speech or literature. Commercial Speech as Free Expression stands as the boldest statement yet for extending full First Amendment protection to commercial speech by proposing a new, four-part synthesis of different perspectives on the manner in which free expression fosters and protects expressive values. This book explains the complexities and subtleties of how the equivalency principle would function in real-life situations. The key is to recognize that as a matter of First Amendment value, commercial speech deserves treatment equivalent to that received by traditionally protected speech.

Civil Rights in America
  • A History
  • Christopher W. Schmidt
  • Published online:
    03 December 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020
  • The term 'civil rights' has such a familiar presence in discussions about American politics and law that we tend to use it reflexively and intuitively, but rarely do we stop to think about what exactly we mean when we use the term and why certain uses strike us as right or wrong. In this book, Professor Christopher W. Schmidt tells the story of how Americans have fought over the meaning of civil rights from the Civil War through today. Through their struggles over what it means to live in a nation dedicated to protecting civil rights, each generation has given the label new life and new meaning. Civil Rights in America shows how the words we use to understand our world become objects of contestation and points of leverage for social, political, and legal action.

Badges and Incidents
  • A Transdisciplinary History of the Right to Education in America
  • Michael J. Kaufman
  • Published online:
    09 September 2019
    Print publication:
    17 October 2019
  • In Badges and Incidents, Michael J. Kaufman undertakes an interdisciplinary investigation of American education law and pedagogy. By weaving together the invaluable insights of law, education, history, political science, economics, psychology, and neuroscience, this book illuminates the ways in which the design of the American educational system does not reflect how human beings live and learn. It examines the principles of the nation's Founders and demonstrates how a distorted presentation of the Founders' views curtailed the development of a truly democratic educational system. The influence of this distortion on several critical Supreme Court decisions is exposed, and these decisions have largely failed to facilitate the educational system the Founders envisioned. By placing contemporary challenges in context and endorsing social constructivist pedagogy as the best path forward, Kaufman's study will prove invaluable to advocates of equity in education, helping them navigate a contentious political climate with an eye toward future reform efforts.

The Government's Speech and the Constitution
  • Helen Norton
  • Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    22 August 2019
  • When we discuss constitutional law, we usually focus on the constitutional rules that apply to what the government does. Far less clear are the constitutional rules that apply to what the government says. When does the speech of this unusually powerful speaker violate our constitutional rights and liberties? More specifically, when does the government's expression threaten liberty or equality? And under what circumstances does the Constitution prohibit our government from lying to us? In The Government's Speech and the Constitution, Professor Helen Norton investigates the variety and abundance of the government's speech, from early proclamations and simple pamphlets, to the electronic media of radio and television, and ultimately to today's digital age. This enables us to understand how the government's speech has changed the world for better and for worse, and why the government's speech deserves our attention, and at times our concern.

Civil Rights
  • Rethinking their Natural Foundation
  • Robin L. West
  • Published online:
    11 July 2019
    Print publication:
    01 August 2019
  • All of us are entitled to the protections of law against violence, to a high quality education, to decent employment that respects our dignity, and to necessary assistance with our caregiving. Our civil rights are our rights to the protections of ordinary law - not constitutional law, and not only antidiscrimination law - that will ensure that we can participate in civil society, and hence lead flourishing lives. In this innovative work, Robin L. West looks back to nineteenth-century Civil Rights Acts to argue that the point of civil rights law is not only non-discrimination, but also to assure that all of us receive the protection of legal rights that promote human flourishing. Since the 1960s, Supreme Court decisions on civil rights issues have focused on non-discrimination and thus have 'hollowed out' this broader meaning of civil rights law. This book reconceives civil rights as a set of legal guarantees that all will be included in the legal, political, economic and social projects central to civil society.

The Nature of Constitutional Rights
  • The Invention and Logic of Strict Judicial Scrutiny
  • Richard H. Fallon Jr.
  • Published online:
    07 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019
  • What does it mean to have a constitutional right in an era in which most rights must yield to 'compelling governmental interests'? After recounting the little-known history of the invention of the compelling-interest formula during the 1960s, The Nature of Constitutional Rights examines what must be true about constitutional rights for them to be identified and enforced via 'strict scrutiny' and other, similar, judge-crafted tests. The book's answers not only enrich philosophical understanding of the concept of a 'right', but also produce important practical payoffs. Its insights should affect how courts decide cases and how citizens should think about the judicial role. Contributing to the conversation between originalists and legal realists, Richard H. Fallon, Jr explains what constitutional rights are, what courts must do to identify them, and why the protections that they afford are more limited than most people think.

The Positive Second Amendment
  • Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller
  • Joseph Blocher, Darrell A.H. Miller
  • Published online:
    31 August 2018
    Print publication:
    13 September 2018
  • The Second Amendment is among the most recognized provisions of the Constitution. It is also perhaps the most misunderstood. Common misconceptions about the amendment - what it forbids, what it permits, how it functions as law - distort the gun debate and America's constitutional culture. In The Positive Second Amendment, Blocher and Miller provide the first comprehensive post-Heller account of the history, theory, and law of the right to keep and bear arms. Their aim is not to pick sides in the gun debate, but rather to show how a positive account of the 'constitutional' Second Amendment differs from its political cousin. Understanding the right to keep and bear arms as constitutional law will challenge many deeply held beliefs. But it may also provide a better way to negotiate the seemingly intractable issues that afflict America's debate over gun rights and regulation.