Civil Liberties & Civil Rights Essay

Civil Liberties & Civil Rights 1. The clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution that prohibits the establishment of religion by Congress. 1. The Free Exercise Clause is the accompanying clause with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. 2. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. 3. The 5th Amendment states that a person can be tried for a serious federal crime only if he or she has been indicted (charged, accused of that crime) by a grand jury. No one may be subjected to double jeopardy – that is, tried twice for the same crime. All persons are protected against self-incrimination; no person can be legally compelled to answer any question in any governmental proceeding if that answer could lead to that person’s prosecution. The 5th Amendment’s Due Process Clause prohibits unfair, arbitrary actions by the Federal Government. 4. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. The Supreme Court has applied the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 5. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights (ratified 1789) prohibiting the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments, including torture. 6. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution each contain a Due Process Clause. Due process deals with the administration of justice and thus the Due Process Clause acts as a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the Government outside the sanction of law 7 . The 14th amendment is a very important amendment that defines what it means to be a US citizen and protects certain rights of the people. There are three important â€Å"clauses† in the 14th amendment  ·Citizenship Clause – the citizenship clause gives individual born in the United States, but especially at that time, African Americans the right to citizenship.  ·Due Process Clause – the due process clause protects the 1st amendment rights of the people and prevents those rights from being taken away by any government without â€Å"due process.†  ·Equal Protection Clause – This part of the fourteenth amendment states that there may be no discrimination against them by the law. 8. The incorporation of the Bill of Rights (or incorporation for short) is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. 9. Prior restraint (also referred to as prior censorship or pre-publication censorship) is censorship imposed, usually by a government, on expression before the expression actually takes place. An alternative is to allow the expression to take place and to take appropriate action afterward, if the expression is found to violate the law, regulations, or other rules. 10. Symbolic speech is a legal term in United States law used to describe actions that purposefully and discernibly convey a particular message or statement to those viewing it. Symbolic speech is recognized as being protected under the First Amendment as a form of speech, but this is not expressly written as such in the document. 11. In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which an officer or agent of the law has the grounds to make an arrest, to conduct a personal or property search, or to obtain a warrant for arrest, etc. when criminal charges are being considered. 12. The exclusionary rule is a legal principle in the United States, under constitutional law, which holds that evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights is sometimes inadmissible for a criminal prosecution in a court of law. 13. Some of the things you can do in the â€Å"real world† you cannot do in school. 14. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonpartisan non-profit organization whose stated mission is â€Å"to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became known as the â€Å"Palmer Raids,† Attorney General Mitchell Palmer began rounding up and deporting so-called radicals. Thousands of people were arrested without warrants and without regard to constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure. Those arrested were brutally treated and held in horrible conditions. 15.  Ã‚ ·A wharf owner sued the city of Baltimore for economic loss occasioned by the city’s diversion of streams, which lowered the water level around his wharves. He claimed that the city took his property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment.  ·Gideon is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In the case, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys, extending the identical requirement made on the federal government under the Sixth Amendment  ·The Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona required (for the first time) that someone accused of a crime be informed of his or her constitutional rights prior to interrogation. This protected the rights of the accused, or the defendant, in two new ways: 1) It educated the person about relevant constitutional rights; and 2) It inhibited law enforcement officials from infringing those rights by applying the Exclusionary Rule to any testimony/incriminating statements the defendant made unless he intentionally waived his rights.  ·State Courts are held to the same standard as Federal Courts when evidence is obtained without the use of a search warrant, ensuring material obtained without a legitimate search warrant or probable cause cannot be used to prosecute a defendant in any court. This was an important application of the Bill of Rights to criminal procedure.  ·Gitlow v. New York was a decision by the United States Supreme Court decided on June 8, 1925, which ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had extended the reach of certain limitations on federal government authority set forth in the First Amendment—specifically the provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the pressâ€⠀to the governments of the individual states. 16. The U.S Constitution safeguards the rights of Americans to privacy and personal autonomy. Although the Constitution does not explicitly provide for such rights, the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution protect these rights, specifically in the areas of marriage, procreation, abortion, private consensual homosexual activity, and medical treatment. State and federal laws may limit some of these rights to privacy, as long as the restrictions meet tests that the Supreme Court has set forth, each involving a balancing of an individual’s right to privacy against the state’s compelling interests. Such compelling interests include protecting public morality and the health of its citizens and improving the quality of life. In Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), the State of Connecticut convicted two persons as accessories for giving a married couple information on and a prescription for a birth-control device. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the co nvictions and found the Connecticut law to be unconstitutional because it violated a right to privacy in the marital relation. Civil Rights 1. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were important to the Civil Rights Movement. 2. Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in United States education, and for Reed v. Reed (1971), where the Supreme Court struck down a law based on gender (with no â€Å"rational relationship to a state objective†) — the first such application based on sex. 3. Legislation frequently involves making classifications that either advantage or disadvantage one group of persons, but not another. States allow 20-year-olds to drive, but don’t let 12-year-olds drive. Indigent single parents receive government financial aid that is denied to millionaires. Obviously, the Equal Protection Clause cannot mean that government is obligated to treat all persons exactly the same–only, at most, that it is obligated to treat people the same if they are â€Å"similarly circumstanced.† Over recent decades, the Supreme Court has developed a three-tiered approach to analysis under the Equal Protection Clause. 4.  Ã‚ ·There were 3 thing said that day that would chage the way people looked at slavery -The court said that dread Scott had no right to sue because the framers of the Constitution (founding fathers) didn’t intend for blacks to be treated like citizens. Congress had no right/authority to take away a person’s property. (Slaves often thought of as property) An if slaves were property the federal government could not restrict the slave master from bringing an housing the on federal land that been off limits to slave owners. The Missouri compromise was unconstitutional .  ·The Plessy case does not impact society . It was overturned by Brown vs. Board of education in 1954. However, as a contributor commenting on this post, I must say that it led to further dispute over civil rights which eventually led to the Supreme Court reconsidering their decision in Brown v. Board of education and eventually overturning it.  · Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark United S tates Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional.  ·U.S. was an important United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. After a first trial going to the Board of Education, the Court held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools, even when the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school rather than from deliberate assignment based on race. 5. They deliberated for a year, at which point they issued a second ruling, Brown II, which avoided specifying what sort of racial balance might constitute compliance. Brown II stated that desegregation should be carried out with â€Å"all deliberate speed.† 6. De jure (Latin for â€Å"from the law†) segregation is the separation of people on the basis of race as required by by law. For example, after the Civil War and the ending of slavery by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution (1865), the governments of the former slave states found new ways to discriminate against black Americans. They enacted laws to require separate public facilities for blacks and whites. Blacks were required, for example, to attend separate schools, to use separate public rest rooms, and to use separate public drinking fountains. The separate facilities for blacks were supposed to be equal to the facilities provided for whites. This â€Å"separate but equal† doctrine was endorsed by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In reality, however, the facilities for black people were rarely, if ever, equal in quality to those provided for whites. Racial separation that exists as a matter of custom rather than as a legal requirement is known as de facto (Latin for â€Å"in fact†) segregation. For example, one neighborhood may include only white families, and another nearby neighborhood may include only black families. However, this racial segregation may have developed informally in response to social and economic factors, not as a requirement of the law. De jure segregation has been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the Court ruled against de jure racial segregation in public schools. In subsequent cases the Court outlawed racial discrimination in other areas of public life. In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed de jure segregation. 7. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted July 2, 1964 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and also women. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public known as â€Å"public accommodations†. 8. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was a natural follow on to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ironically, the 1964 Act had resulted in an outbreak of violence in the South. White racists had launched a campaign against the success that Martin Luther King had had in getting African Americans to register to vote. The violence reminded Johnson that more was needed if the civil rights issue was to be suitably reduced. 9. The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964. 10. White primaries were primary elections in the Southern States of the United States of America in which any non-White voter was prohibited from participating. 11. Shaw v. Reno was a United States Supreme Court case argued on April 20, 1993. The ruling was significant in the area of redistricting and racial gerrymandering. The court ruled in a 5-4 decision that redistricting based on race must be held to a standard of strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause. On the other hand, bodies doing redistricting must be conscious of race to the extent that they must ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act. The redistricting that occurred after the 2000 census was the first nationwide redistricting to apply the results of Shaw v. Reno. 12. Korematsu v. United States was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of citizenship.In a 6-3 decision, the Court sided with the government, ruling that the exclusion order was constitutional. Six of eight Roosevelt nominees sided with Roosevelt. The lone Republican nominee, Owen Roberts dissented. The opinion, written by Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, held that the need to protect against espionage outweighed Fred Korematsu’s individual rights, and the rights of Americans of Japanese descent. (The Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, adding, â€Å"The provisions of other orders requiring persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers and providing for the detention of such persons in assembly and relocation centers were separate, and their validity is not in issue in this proceed ing.†) During the case, Solicitor General Charles Fahy is alleged to have suppressed evidence by keeping from the Court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence indicating that there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies or sending signals to enemy submarines.