Civil Liberties: Constitutional Protections, Incorporation, and Public Tolerance

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering civil liberties, constitutional amendments, legal doctrines, judicial incorporation, public opinion data, and institutional speech policies.

Civil Liberties

Basic freedoms from government coercion, such as freedom of speech, assembly, religion, petition, association, and due process if arrested, functioning as negative liberty.

Negative Liberty

Freedom from government coercion or arbitrary interference, which forms the foundational basis of civil liberties.

Civil Rights

Protections that the government is obligated to actively provide to citizens, such as the right to vote and to have one's vote counted.

First Amendment

Constitutional amendment prohibiting Congress from making laws establishing religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and petition.

Unprotected Forms of Expression

Categories of expression excluded from First Amendment protections, specifically incitement, threats, defamation, and obscenity, with lesser protections granted to businesses and school children.

Bad Tendency Test

A legal standard established in Patterson v. Colorado (1907) permitting speech restrictions if its sole tendency is to incite illegal activity, which remained in use until 1969.

Clear and Present Danger Test

A legal doctrine established in Schenck (1919) permitting the restriction of speech if it poses a clear and present danger to bring about substantive evils.

Imminent Lawless Action Standard

A legal doctrine established in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) stating speech is unprotected only if directed toward inciting imminent lawless action and likely to do so, establishing that mere advocacy of violence remains constitutionally protected.

Fourth Amendment

Constitutional protection securing persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring probable cause supported by oath or affirmation to issue warrants.

Fifth Amendment

Constitutional amendment guaranteeing grand jury indictments for capital crimes, protection against double jeopardy and compelled self-incrimination, due process of law, and just compensation for public taking of private property.

Sixth Amendment

Constitutional amendment guaranteeing criminal defendants the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, notice of accusations, confrontation of opposing witnesses, compulsory process for obtaining favorable witnesses, and assistance of counsel.

Barron v. Baltimore (1833)

Supreme Court ruling establishing that the Bill of Rights originally applied exclusively to the federal government and did not apply to state governments.

Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)

Supreme Court decision holding that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply the protections of the Bill of Rights to state governments.

Selective Incorporation

The constitutional doctrine through which individual protections of the Bill of Rights were gradually nationalized and applied to state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment.

Unincorporated Bill of Rights Provisions

Constitutional protections that remain non-nationalized to the states, including the Third Amendment (quartering soldiers), Fifth Amendment (grand juries), Seventh Amendment (civil jury trials), and Eighth Amendment (excessive bail and fines).

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

Supreme Court case that established the constitutional right to privacy under the Ninth Amendment.

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

Supreme Court ruling that incorporated the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, requiring states to provide attorneys for indigent defendants charged with felony offenses.

Figure 5-3: The Supreme Court's Criminal Rights Decisions in Favor of the Accused

A historical trend line illustrating the percentage of Supreme Court decisions favoring criminal defendants from 1946 to 2006, highlighting a peak above $70\%$ during the late 1960s followed by sustained lower rates between $20\%$ and $50\%$.

Table 5-3: Americans' Great Tolerance of Unpopular Speech

General Social Survey polling data documenting shifts from 1954 to 2006 in public willingness to allow communists, racists, anti-religionists, and homosexuals to speak, teach in college, or circulate books in public libraries.

Figure 2: GSS Civil Liberties Items (1996–2018)

Longitudinal survey data showing tolerance increased by $5$ to $10$ percentage points for anti-religionists, militarists, communists, and homosexuals, remained flat before declining after 2010 for racists, and averaged lowest for Muslim extremists at around $40\%$.

Henderson Rules

CUNY's campus rules on public order that protect academic freedom and the right to advocate positions without physical or verbal abuse, while prohibiting speech or conduct reasonably likely to provoke or encourage physical violence.

Discrimination (CUNY Policy)

Treating an individual differently or less favorably on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex, gender, or national origin.

Harassment (CUNY Policy)

A form of discrimination involving unwelcome spoken, written, visual, or physical conduct based on protected characteristics that unreasonably interferes with work or academic performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or abusive environment.

Bias Incidents vs. Hate Crimes

Reporting distinction used by Hunter College Public Safety where all hate crimes constitute bias incidents, but not all bias incidents rise to the legal threshold of hate crimes.