Prior to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York and Southern Povery Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama reported on the dangers to civil society posed by armed civilian militias. In this book, Thomas Halpern of the ADL describes the origins and evolution of armed civilian militias and Brian Levin of the Southern Poverty Law Center analyzes the legal status of these groups.

In this first comprehensive overview of the intersection of immigration law and the First Amendment, a lawyer and historian traces ideological exclusion and deportation in the United States from the Alien Friends Act of 1798 to the evolving policies of the Trump administration. Beginning with the Alien Friends Act of 1798, the United States passed laws in the name of national security to bar or expel foreigners based on their beliefs and associations—although these laws sometimes conflict with First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and association or contradict America’s self-image as a nation of immigrants. The government has continually used ideological exclusions and deportations of noncitizens to suppress dissent and radicalism throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the War on Anarchy to the Cold War to the War on Terror. In Threat of Dissent—the first social, political, and legal history of ideological exclusion and deportation in the United States—Julia Rose Kraut delves into the intricacies of major court decisions and legislation without losing sight of the people involved. We follow the cases of immigrants and foreign-born visitors, including activists, scholars, and artists such as Emma Goldman, Ernest Mandel, Carlos Fuentes, Charlie Chaplin, and John Lennon. Kraut also highlights lawyers, including Clarence Darrow and Carol Weiss King, as well as organizations, like the ACLU and PEN America, who challenged the constitutionality of ideological exclusions and deportations under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, however, frequently interpreted restrictions under immigration law and upheld the government’s authority. By reminding us of the legal vulnerability foreigners face on the basis of their beliefs, expressions, and associations, Kraut calls our attention to the ways that ideological exclusion and deportation reflect fears of subversion and serve as tools of political repression in the United States.

Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

Essays on the justification, strategy, and limits of mass protests and political dissent In Protest and Dissent, the latest installment of the NOMOS series, distinguished scholars from the fields of political science, law, and philosophy provide a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the potential—and limits—of mass protest and disobedience in today’s age. Featuring ten timely essays, the contributors address a number of contemporary movements, from Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March, to Occupy Wall Street and Standing Rock. Ultimately, this volume challenges us to re-imagine the boundaries between civil and uncivil disagreement, political reform and radical transformation, and democratic ends and means. Protest and Dissent offers thought-provoking insights into a new era of political resistance.

Every American war has brought conflict over the extent to which national security will permit protesters to exercise their constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The most famous case was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, the passionate critic of Lincoln's Civil War policies and one of the most controversial figure in the nation's history. In the great crisis of his time, he insisted that no circumstance, even war, could deprive a citizen of his right to oppose government policy freely and openly. The consequence was a furor which shook the nation's legislative halls and filled the press with vituperation. The ultimate fate for Vallandigham was arrest, imprisonment, and exile. The burning issues raised by his case remain largely unresolved today. Mr. Klement follows the tragic irony of Vallandigham's career and reassesses the man and history's judgment of him. After his death, "Valiant Val'' became a symbol of the dissenter in wartime whose case continues to have relevance in American democracy.

Based on newly discovered letters and memos, this riveting scholarly history of the conservative justice who became a free-speech advocate and established the modern understanding of the First Amendment reconstructs his journey from free-speech skeptic to First Amendment hero.

In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorousempirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy. If, as DiMaggio shows, our newspapers and television news programs play a decisive role in determining what we think, and if, as he demonstrates convincingly, what the media give us is largely propaganda that supports an oppressive and undemocratic status quo, then it is incumbent upon us to make sure that they are responsive to the majority and not just the powerful and privileged few.