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Engines of Liberty

The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law

Contributors

By David Cole

Formats and Prices

Price

$12.99

Price

$16.99 CAD

From the national legal director of the ACLU, an essential guidebook for anyone seeking to stand up for fundamental civil liberties and rights

One of Washington Post‘s Notable Nonfiction Books of 2016

In an age of executive overreach, what role do American citizens have in safeguarding our Constitution and defending liberty? Must we rely on the federal courts, and the Supreme Court above all, to protect our rights? In Engines of Liberty, the esteemed legal scholar David Cole argues that we all have a part to play in the grand civic dramas of our era — and in a revised introduction and conclusion, he proposes specific tactics for fighting Donald Trump’s policies.

Examining the most successful rights movements of the last thirty years, Cole reveals how groups of ordinary Americans confronting long odds have managed, time and time again, to convince the courts to grant new rights and protect existing ones. Engines of Liberty is a fundamentally new explanation of how our Constitution works and the part citizens play in it.

On Sale
Mar 29, 2016
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465098514

David Cole

About the Author

David Cole is the national legal director of the ACLU, and the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. An award-winning author, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, and the legal affairs correspondent for the Nation, he lives in Washington, DC.

Learn more about this author