Constructing Civil Liberties
Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law

This book provides a revisionist account of the genealogy of contemporary constitutional law and morals.

Ken I. Kersch (Author)

9780521010559, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 2 August 2004

402 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.528 kg

'Ken Kersch adds an interesting new perspective to the study of American constitutional development. I found especially illuminating his treatment of late 19th century notions of civil liberties, but the entire book repays close study and will undoubtedly generate much discussion.' Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School

The modern jurisprudence of civil liberties and civil rights is best understood, not as the application of principles to facts, but as a product of currents of progressive reformist political thought. This book demonstrates that rights of individuals in the criminal justice system, workplace, and school now identified with the essence of civil rights and liberties, were the end point of a layered succession of progressive-spirited ideological and political campaigns of statebuilding and reform. In questioning this vision of constitutional development, this book integrates the developmental paths of civil liberties law into an account of the rise of the modern state and the reformist political and intellectual movements that shaped and sustained it. In doing so, Constructing Civil Liberties provides a vivid, multi-layered, revisionist account of the genealogy of contemporary constitutional law and morals.

1. Introduction
2. Reconstituting privacy and criminal process rights
3. Reconstituting individual rights: from labor rights to civil rights
4. Education rights: Reconstituting the school
5. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB], Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Politics & government [JP], History of the Americas [HBJK]