The focus of these entries is on the relationship between the subject and civil liberties. In addition to the basic discussion of the subject, each entry may include the following issues: history, origins, and development; legal, academic, or theoretical debates; perspectives from different fields or schools of thought; or any unresolved issues concerning the subject.
The words ‘‘liberty’’ and ‘‘rights’’ had far different connotations for people in the American colonies, depending on their status as slaves, free blacks, Native Americans on their homeland, women, indentured servants, loyalists, conscripted soldiers, religious dissidents, radical patriots, or propertied white males.
The Puritans of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony formed a tightly knit community with a common belief system enforced by civil and ecclesiastical law.
Anonymity has long been an important issue in American politics and jurisprudence. The key tension in American anonymity law is between the potentially chilling effects on speech stemming from compelled disclosure of identity and the desire to hold individuals accountable for harmful speech.
The current Internet architecture allows most on-line communications to be traced back to the author’s computer. That tracing process depends on the cooperation of Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
The First Amendment to the Constitution provides for the right of the people ‘‘to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’’
The concept of a ‘‘buffer zone’’ was first raised in the 1990s. It was based on two things: increasingly violent and intrusive protests by anti-abortion forces and clinic actions to try to keep protesters a certain distance away from the clinics.
Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of the individual’s membership in a particular group or class.
Those responsible for adding the Bill of Rights to the new federal constitution intended those amendments to act as limits on the national government only, a point illustrated as succinctly as possible by the opening words of the First Amendment: ‘‘Congress [emphasis added] shall make no law . . . .’’
Appropriation of name or likeness, the oldest and most widely recognized branch of the invasion of privacy tort, imposes liability for unauthorized use of another’s name, likeness, or other identifying characteristics.
Depending on whether the crime charged is brought federally or within a state jurisdiction, an individual accused of a crime could be faced with a few different pretrial proceedings.
Law enforcement officials in America and in England in the period preceding the American Revolution did not have broad inherent authority to search and seize; such actions required authorization, and the warrant system was the primary means to confer that authority.
An arrest constitutes a seizure and must therefore satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that all searches and seizures be reasonable.
It was not until the last decade of the twentieth century that the U.S. Supreme Court decided three cases in which the Court began what remains a tentative exploration of whether (if at all) the U.S. Constitution guarantees a choice concerning the time and manner of one’s death.
The United States provides several forms of relief to refugees, or individuals fleeing persecution in their home country. The legal framework governing refugees derives principally from international law and has been implemented in statutes and regulations.
The Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment regulates government actors and provides, in part, the ‘‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.’’