Myka Brown
5-16-16
Final Government Paper Draft
Smith
Is the American Civil Liberties Union bad?
The American Civil Liberties Union is a non-profit organization that protects and defends the personal, individual rights and liberties of Americans, underlined by the Constitution. This organization was specifically led by Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, and Albert DeSilver. As the century is transitioning and more uprising opinions on social, economic, political issues are being addressed in media, change is starting to happening. Today, America faces controversial issues, like the right of abortion, or even the rights of allowing gender-neutral bathrooms in public schools. The ACLU is one of the many organizations that are assisting
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Directed by Louise Melling, the Center for Liberty includes the LGBT & AIDS Project, the Reproductive Freedom Project, the Women's Rights Project and the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. The Center for Democracy, under the direction of Jameel Jaffer, works to strengthen democratic values, promote human rights and ensure government accountability. The Center for Democracy includes the National Security Project, the Human Rights Program and the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. The Center for Justice, directed by Jeffery Robinson, is focused on the problems in the U.S. criminal justice system, including the treatment of prisoners, the death penalty and the policies of over-incarceration that have led the United States to imprison more people than any other country in the world. The Center for Justice includes the National Prison Project, the Criminal Law Reform Project and the Capital Punishment …show more content…
However, the adjustments of freedoms are becoming a much more wider range to uphold its founding principles, adjusting with time to include the preservation of individual privacies. However, I concur that the ACLU isn’t necessarily good or bad. The organization are bringing up issues that need to be address. Due to the fact that the new generation is transitioning over. However, the organization does aim for good intent, but in a way attempts to not apply a bias. When there already is a bias that is applied. I feel as though American needs to talk about immigration limits, abortion, gender-neutral bathrooms, and ect. That is the only way that American can advance further and understand differences within society. The ACLU is one of the many organizations that are trying to expose and educate the youth about the issues that are going on around them. Which, in my point-of-view, is a healthy strategy to
One group that argues this is the American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly disagrees with the Patriot Act. They have stated that investigations into the Patriot Act, “reveal thousands of violations of law,” (ACLU), while this is simply not true. One controversial piece of the Patriot Act are roving wiretaps. These allow government investigators to follow and put surveillance on certain people, rather than certain devices, so that they may save time and effort. According to Nathan Sales, a law professor at George Mason University, “Federal courts agree that Title III’s roving wiretaps authority is constitutional and… provides strong support for constitutionality,” (Sales).
In 1971, 1 out of 12 Americans were incarcerated. Since that time, the prisoner ratio has exponentially increased; today, that ratio is 1 out of 51. With that number continuing to rise, many problems result out of it. Prison overcrowding is a growing problem in the United States. The number of people being taken in has regressive effects on the purpose behind imprisonment.
This case clashes with freedom of speech, but it is also about freedom to
The LGBTQQ rights movement was started on December 10th, 1924 led by Henry Gerber the grandfather of the Gay Rights Movements. The LGBTQQ Rights Movement still continues on today in the USA and other countries around the world. This society is a group of people that believe that they as people in the LGBTQQ community should have the same rights as everyday people like me and you. LGBTQQ people have been fighting to be equal in the community so that they aren’t discriminated at their jobs or in their communities. The LGBTQQ community has faced many forms of discrimination such as unequal treatment at work and unfair treatment within the community.
Sometimes the Supreme Court will revert the rulings of these lower courts but more than often they’ll stay with the original ruling or they might not even look at the case. My thoughts on civil rights and civil liberties are simple I feel as though they worked for people in the past but they aren’t for today's times. I think they’re slowly dismantling and one day the government is going to have to revise to fit today’s times if not it could mean the collapse of the United States government as we know
The article argues that the courts should only view harmful speech in the same eyes and rule them the same as if they were conduct harms. The source then discusses how many scholars believe that freedom of speech only applies when the benefits outweigh the harms, regarding what is being said. The article does a good job of approaching the problem through a semi-neutral lens. The article clearly lets its opinion be known at times; however, it approaches the opposite side of the argument in a fair manner. The article will be incredibly beneficial because it discusses when freedom of speech should not apply with a neutral approach.
The Supreme Court has been entrusted with the task of interpreting the Constitution of the United States. In the First Amendment of the Constitution, freedom of speech serves as the foundational liberty which is the cornerstone to the practice of democracy. Commencing at the early part of the twentieth century cases such as Schenck v. United States, Debs v. United States, Abrams v United States, Whitney v. California, and Dennis v. United States, paved the way for the Court to set the legal standard for defining protected and unprotected speech. Nonetheless, the Court has struggled to interpret said boundaries property and has failed to protect speech in some of the above cases. This essay will analyze two different scenarios where the Court
To much of the common citizen’s disbelief, the spike in the mass incarceration of citizens in America is not necessarily a result of the national increase in violence, but rather an operation fueled by the corruption within our own legal system. Although many individuals in the United States would stand to believe that there is no particular way that anyone could stand to profit from the mass incarceration of Americans–they are wrong. The standing profiteers for mass incarceration is the private prison industry. The name to their game is simple, the more that the public good suffers from mass incarceration, the more government money the companies can obtain. As a result of these efforts, the private prison industry cuts corners at the expense of public safety and prison security in order to maximize profits by obtaining government money, resulting in the mass denial of American citizen’s liberty.
We have a system in place that is meant to serve the American people and incarcerate those who are a menace to society. A system like this seems good on paper, until the people in the system and those who contribute to it, taint it with their bias. We see this predominantly evident in the story written by Walter Dean Myers “Monster” and the documentary “Murder on a Sunday Morning”. Though these things show us the same theme, they have their individual differences separating them.
Have you ever wondered how many people actually get arrested in a year? According to the U.S Department of Justice, a staggering estimate of over 14 million people were arrested in 2005. Of those 14 million people that were arrested, about 1.53 million of them were sentenced to a jail term. That same year a study was done on 404,638 newly released prisoners in 30 states. The study showed that within three years, about 67.8 percent of released prisoners were rearrested and within five years about three-quarters of them were arrested.
The 1st amendment is fundamental in a democracy, it gives each individual their opinion about a certain subject and gives the people the "power" to speak out when they find something wrong. For example, they can speak what they find wrong with our Representatives, without the retaliation or censorship of the government. You might think that you can go down the street and say whatever you like without anybody telling you can't. Hold your horse right there be aware that you can say what you want but there is certain things that the 1st amendment doesn't cover. The Supreme Court has some cases where it decided where the 1st amendment was appropriate and where it wasn't.
Freedom. The importance of freedom is often forgotten as Americans live day by day taking this gift for granted. In this day and age, freedom seems as a “simple gift’ obtained by every American, but one forgets to think about those who were once unable to enjoy the freedoms one is promised daily. Back in the day, freedom seemed as nothing more than a dream to those of color. Everyday of a colored person’s life consisted of harassment and discrimination as no one cared to treat them as equals.
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
Implications for this book include Santos’s desire to help fix the prison system and the mass incarceration issue the U.S is facing. Santos is also helping other that are being prosecuted by the failing system. Upon being released and piecing his life back together, Santos started his own foundation called the Michael G Santos foundation. Through this foundation, Santos is helping bring awareness to the socials issues that result from mass incarceration while also helping former prisoner transition and integrate successfully back into the work force. Through Santos’s hard work and commitment, Santos successfully helped Maine’s department of corrections enhance their prison system by the virtue of his own programs that he has developed post
Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.