SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article 1: Weinrib, L. M. (2016). From Left to Rights: Civil Liberties lawyering between the World Wars. Law, Culture, and the Humanities.

Abstract: In the formative years of the modern First Amendment, civil liberties lawyers struggled to justify their participation in a legal system they perceived as biased and broken. For decades, they charged, the courts had fiercely protected property rights even while they tolerated broad-based suppression of the “personal rights,” such as expressive freedom, through which peaceful challenges to industrial interests might have proceeded. This article focuses on three phases in the relationship between the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the courts in the period between the world wars: first, the ACLU’s attempt to promote worker mobilization by highlighting judicial hypocrisy; second, its effort to induce incremental legal reform by mobilizing public opinion; and third, its now-familiar reliance on the judiciary to insulate minority views against state intrusion and majoritarian abuses. By reconstructing these competing approaches, the article explores the trade-offs – some anticipated and some unintended – entailed by the ACLU’s mature approach.

Journal Article 2: Kunstler, B. (2013). Ten scenarios for the future of civil liberties along the road to the Twenty-Second Century. World Futures Review, 5(2), 113–126.

Abstract: The author presents ten plausible scenarios, together with accompanying commentaries, that trace alternative paths which developments in the area of civil liberties might take between now and the twenty-second century. Conclusions regarding the desirability and relative likelihood of these different scenarios are purposely left to the reader.