civil liberties

Instead of being protections from government power, civil rights arr obligations of government power, what the government must do to guarantee that citizens are treated equally

Foundations of civil liberties and civil rights are to be found in the state and federal Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, and so forth

Why might federal and state government actions threaten civil liberties? the fundamental reason is the clash between to forces the basic duty of governments to protect the public health, safety in general welfare from such dangers as crime, environmental hazards, and terrorism versus the freedom of citizens to go about their business without governmental interference

habeas corpus is a court order demanding that an individual in custody be brought into court and sharing the cost of detention

Civil liberties are defined as the areas of personal freedom constitutionally protected from government interference

In 1897, the Supreme Court did hold that the amendment's due process clause prevented states from taking private property for public use without just compensation form of deprivation of property that is specifically prohibited in the Fifth amendment

But even though in both amendments due process is required for the taking of life and liberty as well as property, only the provision protecting property was incorporated into the 14th amendment as a limitation on state power

Civil liberties did not expand through the 14th amendment again until 1925 when the Supreme Court held that freedom of speech among the fundamental personal rights and liberties protected by the stew process clause of the 14th amendment from impairment by the states

In 1931 quart out of freedom of the press to that fundamentalist in 1939 it added freedom of assembly

In the 1937 case of Palko v. Connecticut, the court from the state’s existing power to determine their own laws on a number of fundamental civil liberties issues. In that case, the Connecticut Court had Frank Palko guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Unhappy with the verdict, Connecticut appealed it to the state’s highest court, won the appeal, and succeeded in getting Palko convicted of first-degree murder in a new trial. Palko appealed to the Supreme Court on what seemed an open-and-shut case of double jeopardy, which is prohibited by the Fifth Amendment

Selective incorporation is the process by which different protections in the Bill of Rights were incorporated into the 14th Amendment thus guaranteeing citizens protection from state as well as national governments

Almost every state voluntarily complies with the Seventh Amendment’s requirement of jury trials, I have only been once but was not chosen

Ending birthright citizenship would probably require a constitutional amendment which seems unlikely to occur

The Establishment Clause is the First Amendment clause that says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. This constitutional provision means that a wall of separation exists between church and state.

The establishment clause in the idea of no laugh regarding the establishment of religion could be interpreted in several ways

One interpretation that probably reflects the views of many of the First Amendment authors is simply that of the national government is prohibited from establishing an official church.

The second possible interpretation is that the government may assist religious institutions where ideas as long as it does not take sides or show favoritism among them do the United States accommodate religious beliefs in a variety of ways from the reference to God on currency to the prayer that begins in every session of Congress. The courts have always upheld these forms of religious establishment

This review regarding religious establishment the most commonly held today favors a wall of separation, Jefferson’s formulation, between church and state

In its 1971 decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, it attempted to specify some criteria to guide future decisions and those of lower courts about when the constitution permits. Such support collectively these criteria came to be called the lemon test, the court held the idea the court held that government aid to religious schools would be constitutional if it had a secular purpose its effect was neither to advance nor inhibit religion, and it did not entangle government and religious institutions in each other's affairs

And the 2017 case of Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, the Supreme Court upheld the right of a religious school to benefit from a state-funded playground resurfacing program (582 US_2017) the court reasoned that excluding religious schools from this program would actually be discriminating against them because of their religious character

In Van Orden v. Perry, the court decided that a display of the 10 Commandments outside the Texas state capital did not violate the constitution

In McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the court determined that a display of the 10 Commandments inside Kentucky Courthouses was unconstitutional

Justice Stephen Breyer, the deciding vote in both cases, said that the display in Van Orden had a secular purpose, whereas the displays in McCreary had a purely religious purpose. The key difference is that the Texas display had been exhibited in a park for 40 years with other monuments related to the development of American law, whereas the Kentucky display was erected much more recently, and initially by itself, suggesting to some justices that its posting had a religious purpose. Clearly, the issue of government-sponsored displays of religious symbols has not been settled

The free exercise clause is the first amendment clause that protects a citizens right to believe and practice whatever religion they choose

The precedent-setting case involving free exercise is West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett in 1943, which involved the children of a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, who refused to salute and pledge diligence to the American flag in their school on the grounds that are fully religious faith did not permit it

Three years earlier the court had appealed such a requirement and had permitted schools to expel students for refusing to salute the flag, but the entry of the United States into a war to defend democracy in 1941 coupled with the ugly treatment to which Jehovah's Witnesses children had been subjected persuaded to court to reverse itself, and to endorse the free exercise religion, even when it may be offensive to the beliefs of the majority

In Holt v. Hobbs it involved a prisoner in an Arkansas jail Gregory Holt, who asserted that his Muslim beliefs required him to grow a beard. The court held that an Arkansas prison policy prohibiting beards in a federal statute to sign to protect the ability of prisoners to worship as they pleased.

The Burwell v. hobby lobby stores, case involved the owners of a chain of craft stores who claimed that the section of the Affordable Care Act requiring up employees employers to provide their female employees with contraceptive coverage violated the owners religious beliefs, as protected by the religious freedom restoration act this law enacted in 1993 requires the government to prove a compelling interest for requiring individuals to O'bella that violates their religious beliefs the Supreme Court ruled in favor of hobby lobby

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a Louisiana minister was cited on a misdemeanor charge for ignoring the state’s ban on gatherings of more than 50 people. He said he was being persecuted for his religion in violation of the constitution however the power of the state to protect the public’s health probably takes precedence over the ministers’ right to hold religious services.
Democracy depends on the ability of individuals to talk to one another and to disseminate information. It is difficult to conceive how democratic politics could function without free and open debate.

Justice, Oliver Wendell, Holmes said in 1919 that “the best of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market… that at any rate is the theory of our constitution.”

What is sometimes called the marketplace of ideas, received a good deal of protection from the courts in 1938. The Supreme Court held that any legislation restricting speech is to be subjected to a more exacting judicial scrutiny than are most other types of legislation.

Strict scrutiny does not mean that speech can never be regulated, over the past 200 years the courts have scrutinized many different forms of speech, and have constructed different principles and guidelines for each

Within seven years of the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, Congress adopted the infamous, alien and sedition acts (long since repealed), which, among other things, made it a crime to say or publish anything that might tend to defame, or bring into disrepute the government of the United States

The first modern free-speech case arose immediately after World War I, and involved persons convicted under the Federal Espionage Act of 1917 for opposing US involvement in the war

The Supreme Court upheld the app, espionage act, and refused to protect the speech rights of the dependence on the grounds, that their activities, and appeals, to draftees to resist the draft constituted a clear and present danger to national security. This is the first and most same test for one government intervention or censorship can be permitted now it has been discarded since

Clear and present danger test is the test used to determine whether speech is protected or unprotected based on its capacity to present a clear and present danger to society

In the 1969 case of Brandenburg versus Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that as long as speech falls short of actually inciting action, it cannot be prohibited, even if it is hostile to, or subversive of the government and its policies

This decision came in the case of a Ku Klux Klan leader Charles Brandenburg had been arrested and convicted of advocating revenge and action against the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court among others, if they continued to suppress the white Caucasian race.

Although Brandenburg was not carrying a weapon, some of the members of his audience were. the Supreme Court reversed, the state court and freedom Brandenburg will also declared Ohio's criminals syndicalism act unconstitutional because it did not distinguish near advocacy or issues or opinions from other incitement to imminent lawless action it would be difficult to go much further in protecting freedom of speech

Campaign finance reform laws of the early 1970s arising out of the Watergate scandal aimed to put severe limits on campaign spending. in the 1976 case Buckley versus Vallejo however, the Supreme Court declared important provisions of these laws unconstitutional based on a new principal that spending by, or on behalf of candidates is a form of speech protected by the first amendment

the issue came up again in 2003 with the passage of an even stricter campaign finance law, the bipartisan campaign reform act initially the Supreme Court upheld it, but in 2007, the court reversed itself in Federal Election Commission versus Wisconsin's right to life, declaring that political advocacy groups last-minute ads that had been prohibited by the BCRA were protected speech, so as long as they focus mainly on issues, and were not simply appeals to vote for her or against a specific candidate

Likewise, in the case of 2010 Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission, the court struck down the BCRA’s ban on corporate funding of advertisements, supporting or opposing particular candidates on the grounds that the spending is political speech that the constitution prohibits the government from regulating

Fighting words or speech that directly insights damaging conduct

In 1942 a man who had called a police officer a goddamned racketeer and a damn fascist was arrested and convicted of violating a state law forbidding the use of offensive language in public when his case reached the Supreme Court, the arrest was upheld because no such words are protected by the first amendment because they are no essential part of any exposition of ideas

This decision was reaffirmed in 1951 in Dennis versus the United States, when the court held that there is no substantial public interest in permitting certain kinds of speech, deluding obscene, profane, libelous, and insulting fighting words, that by their very utterance, inflict injury, or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace since that time, however, the court has reversed almost every conviction based on arguments that the speaker has used the fighting words

Many universities have attempted to develop codes to suppress such speech and the drafting of such codes has been encouraged by the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. the Trump administration, however, sought to bring an end to speech codes and butte them is violations of free speech

Critics also charge that procedures encouraged by the OCR in cases of sexual assault or misconduct, ignored the rights of the accused and led, on some campuses, to the creation of trials that assumed the guilt of anyone charged with an offense

In 2017 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded the department’s previous guidelines declaring they were unfair to those accused of sexual misconduct

In 2019 the Department of education issued a new guidance letter that enhanced the rights of those accused of sexual misconduct on campus and made such charges more difficult to prove this issue is still being flat on college campuses across the country

The Supreme Court has held such an environment, can result from sexual harassment defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature a fundamental freeze speech issued is involved in these regulations of hostile speech

Many local governments have adopted ordinances banning hate speech, forms of expression intended to assert hatred toward one or another group of people be they African-Americans, Jews, Muslims, or others such ordinances seldom pass constitutional muster

The leading Supreme Court case in this realm is the 1992 decision in our RAV versus the city of St. Paul where a white teenager, was arrested for burning a cross on the lawn of a black family in violation of a municipal ordinance that banned cross-burning. The court ruled that such an ordinance must be content neutral that is it must not prohibit actions directed at some groups, but not others the statute in question prohibited only the cross burning, which is typically directed at African Americans since a statute banning all forms of hateful expression would be deemed overly broad the RAV standards suggest that virtually all speech is constitutionally protected

Today the ability to post messages on social media platforms like Facebook is critically important to those who want to disseminate their ideas

In 2019 Facebook announced a change to its terms of service agreement designed to prevent users from posting hateful commentary and claims. the ban seemed especially though not exclusively aimed at a group of right-wing activists

Facebook is a private organization so the constitutional restrictions on the government's actions may not apply however, social media platforms are now some of the most important public forms in America. Their actions have an enormous impact on free speech.

The issue of hate speech has also ever written on a member of college campuses where some students and faculty have demanded that certain public figures usually conservative, and far-right ones be banned from speaking on the grounds that they promote hatred

Student protesters have forced to cancellation of speeches by conservatives, disrupted talks, and unsuccessfully tried to prevent white nationalists from speaking there seems to be little doubt that the right of all individuals to speak is protected by the constitution