civil liberty

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civil liberty

the right of an individual to certain freedoms of speech and action. Now often mediated through HUMAN RIGHTS law.

References in periodicals archive ?

Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of Obama Presidency, by jouralist Daniel Klaidman, partly explains how the Obama administration has dashed civil libertarians" expectations.

Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency

Neier, like most civil libertarians is nonplussed; it's not his job to worry about such inconveniences.

Uncivil liberties

He was a liberal Democrat and New Dealer/Fair Dealer, grassroots political activist, civil libertarian, and a Jew.

Gus J. Solomon; liberal politics, Jews, and the federal courts

Catching the opposition napping, one month before the beginning of the legislative session in January, a tight-knit coalition of groups, including gay, civil libertarian, and disability rights advocates, began meeting privately to strategize.

Scene of the crime; laws against gay sex can block everything we want: marriage, adoption, and equal rights

The passing of the great civil libertarian and legal scholar Thomas Emerson, in this season when the issues that he championed are much discussed, recalls a little history.

Emerson, Thomas

Among the topics he explores are civil libertarian responses to World War II, the emergence of the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, tensions between communist and non-communist civil libertarians revealed in the Gouzenko affair (a 1945-6 Soviet espionage case), communist and non-communist co-operation in overturning the Padlock Law (used to close "subversive" newspapers), the role of the Jewish Labour Committee in establishing a network of groups committed to the defense of ethnic equality, and the aforementioned passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights.

Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960

We asked Doctorow, a devout civil libertarian, to recommend three political books for young adults:

Revolution for kids!

"In Britain it is 'reasonable suspicion,' here it's 'probable cause'--huge difference." Then he asked his guest, Larry Walters, an attorney and civil libertarian, "Why shouldn't we have reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause," like the British do?

Fourth Amendment protections under attack by "conservatives"

"The establishment of an office to pump federal money into religious charities has brought a uniform reaction from across the spectrum of churches and civil libertarian organizations, left to right.

Faith-Based Folly: Americans Say `Not So Fast'

Reviewing Attorney General John Ashcroft's guidelines for terrorism investigations, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff warns that they "could be part of the new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, which envisions the nabbing of 'pre-criminals."' In Minority Report, an elite FBI "pre-crime".

Minority Report: close to reality? (Insider Report)

Reinhardt is positively generous in his assessment of Clinton compared to the columnist and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff.

The Clinton courts: liberals need not apply

The sheer audacity of the belief that anything the majority wants in a democracy is okay; the presumption to rights of power and control embodied in the idea that the majority can repeal and infringe upon the rights of minorities; the assumption of absolute moral infallibility--it's more than any civil libertarian or First Amendment advocate should be required to endure.