TAKING LIBERTIES

A focused, thorough account of the federal government's panicked response to 9/11 and the consequent rollback of our civil liberties.

President of the American Civil Liberties Union since 2008, Brooklyn Law School professor Herman (Terrorism, Government, and Law, 2008, etc.) provides a well-organized look at government incursions on Americans' constitutional rights in the decade following 9/11. Divided into three major sections—“Dragnets and Watchlists,” “Surveillance and Secrecy” and “American Democracy”—the book offers a compelling case that the basic constitutional protections most Americans take for granted, including the rights to free speech, a fair trial and due process, as well as freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, were seriously compromised after 9/11 as a result of the government's well-meaning but ill-conceived efforts to safeguard the country against another attack. Herman's restrained approach to her numerous outrageous examples of governmental intrusiveness serves her well; her prose style is persuasively fair and reasonable. Despite her role as president of one of the country's best-known liberal-leaning advocacy groups, the author is no rigid ideologue. Even after documenting their routine disregard for our civil liberties, she remains eager to credit governmental agencies like the FBI and leaders like President Obama with the best of motives. In Herman's view, the rapid erosion of our most basic rights has less to do with federal agents' hubris and lust for power than it does with their righteous yet misguided desire to keep America safe. Rather than dismissing it as irrelevant, she carefully examines the question of whether any of these problematic measures are actually making us safer (it seems the answer is no).

A valuable contribution to the growing body of literature regarding the War on Terror's impact on our constitutional rights.