A Brief History of Race and the Supreme Court

This essay, based on a lecture sponsored by the Penn Institute for Urban Research, presents a brief history of the Supreme Court on race issues, from the Marshall Court to the present, beginning by focusing on Brown v. Board of Education and the development in the mid-1970s of a narrow purposeful discrimination rule that has made it near impossible for minority claims of discrimination to succeed

Self-Defense and Gun Regulation for All Commentary: Gun Control Policy and the Second Amendment: Responses

The importance and universality of self-defense rights are beyond dispute. Self-defense emerged as a major social and constitutional issue in the second half of the twentieth century focused on minorities and women before it provided the primary basis for expansive Second Amendment rights. Supporters of broad Second Amendment rights base them on an individual and collective right to self-defense against attacks by others, but they differ about the source of the danger—the others who are attacking. Professor Nicholas Johnson emphasizes that law-abiding blacks are most at risk and most need guns to defend themselves because of black-on-black violence and the government’s failure to provide safety. He opposes gun regulation, which he considers “disarmament,” and favors armed selfdefense. The import of the common arguments of opponents of gun regulation is that their absolutist understanding of their rights to selfdefense and freedom, their dire perceptions of the perils of government, and their fantasies of the necessity and efficacy of armed resistance to the federal government require the rest of us to live with the open gun market, with its very real and immediate toll of over 30,000 people shot dead a year, and with the usually unspoken normalcy of widespread murder and fear that undermines the quality and tenor of daily life. But there are regulations that would significantly reduce the easy availability of guns to criminals, youth, and mass murderers without interfering with self-defense. Blacks and whites, and everybody else, do not need that open gun market for self-defense. Self-defense and gun regulation can coexist

Remedies for Private Intelligence Abuses: Legal and Ideological Barriers

Surveillance and intelligence activities by private companies and individuals are not new to the United States; the nuclear power industry\u27s resort to such activities poses new civil liberties and social problems. The extreme danger embodied in nuclear facilities and materials and the fear of nuclear terrorism provide the most plausible justification in our history for the wholesale destruction of civil liberties. Ostensibly responding to these dangers, corporate and government agencies have conducted surveillance of and gathered intelligence about opponents of nuclear power. As in the past, the targets of these activities are not terrorists but citizens who nonviolently oppose corporate and government policy: the intent and effect has been not to provide security, but to subvert groups and individuals who seek to change those policies. The emerging question is not merely whether we can tolerate some infringements on civil liberties in the face of a potentially great danger, but whether nuclear power and democracy can coexist. The nature and scope of the nuclear industry\u27s surveillance and intelligence activities have been set out and documented elsewhere. This paper discusses possible legal remedies available to victims of such activities, and after concluding that existing remedies are inadequate, attempts to place the issue in a broader social context

Remedies for Private Intelligence Abuses: Legal and Ideological Barriers

Surveillance and intelligence activities by private companies and individuals are not new to the United States; the nuclear power industry\u27s resort to such activities poses new civil liberties and social problems. The extreme danger embodied in nuclear facilities and materials and the fear of nuclear terrorism provide the most plausible justification in our history for the wholesale destruction of civil liberties. Ostensibly responding to these dangers, corporate and government agencies have conducted surveillance of and gathered intelligence about opponents of nuclear power. As in the past, the targets of these activities are not terrorists but citizens who nonviolently oppose corporate and government policy: the intent and effect has been not to provide security, but to subvert groups and individuals who seek to change those policies. The emerging question is not merely whether we can tolerate some infringements on civil liberties in the face of a potentially great danger, but whether nuclear power and democracy can coexist. The nature and scope of the nuclear industry\u27s surveillance and intelligence activities have been set out and documented elsewhere. This paper discusses possible legal remedies available to victims of such activities, and after concluding that existing remedies are inadequate, attempts to place the issue in a broader social context