[PDF] Desecrating The American Flag eBook

Author : Robert Justin Goldstein
Publisher : Kent State University Press
Page : 486 pages
File Size : 41,98 MB
Release : 1996
Category : History
ISBN : 9780873385985

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In 1989 a political fire storm erupted after the United States Supreme Court declared that dissidents had the constitutional right under the First Amendment to burn the flag. To some, including President George Bush and many members of Congress, the flag was a sacred symbol of American freedoms. They believed its physical destruction posed a serious threat to the country and demanded a constitutional amendment to reverse the Court's decision. For those who defended the Court's ruling, flag desecration was a form of constitutionally protected free speech, and any attempt to forbid such conduct was seen as creating a dangerous precedent. Burning the Flag brings together the disciplines of law, journalism, political science, and history to explain and place the development of the controversy in its full context. It is based on extensive research in legal, congressional, and journalistic sources and on exclusive interviews with nearly 100 of the key players in the dispute, among them flag burners, judges, lawyers and lobbyists on both sides, members of Congress, congressional aides, and journalists. A timely addendum chronicles the late 1995 attempts once again to pass a constitutional amendment on flag desecration, adding to the significance of this readable account. Burning the Flag will be of value to both an academic and a general audience, particularly to civil libertarians, flag buffs, and those interested in popular media, American politics, modern American history, and constitutional law.

Author : Robert Justin Goldstein
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 44,27 MB
Release : 1996-12-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780815627166

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Desecrating the American Flag is the only comprehensive, edited, and annotated collection of critical documents regarding the controversies swirling around the desecration of the American flag. Should violators of the Stars and Stripes be prosecuted? Or legally protected? This issue reached center stage in American politics throughout the 1990s when Congress debated whether or not to amend the constitution to forbid flag desecration; but this debate has been hotly contested since the Civil War. Robert Justin Goldstein brings together almost 150 key documents spanning more than 100 years. He culls from a variety of sources—Congressional hearings, debates, legal briefs, oral arguments, newspaper articles, and court rulings, for example—and then carefully edits each document to retain key material. Introductory essays place each document within a broader historical, political, and legal context.

Author : Robert Justin Goldstein
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 17,80 MB
Release : 2019-05-28
Category : History
ISBN : 100031071X

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First published in 1995, Saving Old Glory provides a detailed account of the origins and development of the American flag desecration controversy.

Author : Robert Justin Goldstein
Publisher :
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 38,78 MB
Release : 2000
Category : History
ISBN :

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When Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag as part of a political protest, he was convicted for flag desecration under Texas law. But the Supreme Court, by a contentious 5 to margin, overturned that conviction, claiming that Johnson's action constituted symbolic -- and thus protected -- speech. Heated debate continues to swirl around that controversial decision, both hailed as a victory for free speech advocates and reviled as an abomination that erodes the patriotic foundations of American democracy. Such passionate yet contradictory views are at the heart of this landmark case. Book jacket.

Author : Randy E. Barnett
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 489 pages
File Size : 22,59 MB
Release : 2021-11-02
Category : Law
ISBN : 0674257766

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A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendmentÕs key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws. Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment. With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.