The Chase Court combined powerful rhetoric in favor of civil liberties with very little protection for civil liberties.

It will be useful to examine this topic by examining six eras of American history.

Capital punishment is a punishment option of the federal government in more than two thirds of states in the United States.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote about a world in which the responsibility of fire fighters was to burn books rather than to extinguish fires.

In the fourth volume of his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1769, William Blackstone argued that freedom of the press under the common law was limited to a prohibition on prior restraints.

The Constitution of 1787 did not contain a bill of rights, although it did have some protections for some civil liberties. The original Constitution prohibited ex post facto laws and bills of attainder, preserved the right of a jury trial in criminal cases, and banned religious tests for officeholding.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in America, there was homogeneity among Americans in that the majority were Protestant Christians, albeit of varied denominations.

One of the central issues in free exercise clause jurisprudence has been the question of whether the state is obliged to give individuals exemptions from government regulations that interfere with their free exercise of religion.

Although the first two clauses of the First Amendment concern the establishment and free exercise of ‘‘religion,’’ the amendment long has been understood to protect the liberty and equality of nonbelievers.

The fact of an arrest and the definition of an arrest are of fundamental importance.

The extent to which the Constitution’s Bill of Rights and other political freedoms are enjoyed by noncitizens is a question that has existed since the founding of the United States.