Engines of Liberty; Cole and Wiener Live in Conversation
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How did marriage equality go from unthinkable to inevitable?
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How did the right to bear arms, dismissed as a fraud by Warren Burger in 1991, become a constitutional right in 2008?
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What caused President Bush to curtail his most aggressive counterterror measures after 9/11?
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How might constitutional law change in the post-Scalia era?
Join us to celebrate the publication of Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activist to Make Constitutional Law, in which David Cole, a noted constitutional scholar, lawyer, and contributor to the New York Review of Books, New Yorker, and The Nation, shows how citizens, acting together, have successfully transformed constitutional law.
Wednesday, June 15 at 7pm
Ward AME Church, 1177 W 25th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Book will be available for purchase at the door (cash or credit)
Free admission with ticket reservation – RSVP now
David Cole is the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. A leading civil liberties lawyer, he is the author of No Equal Justice and Enemy Aliens, which won the American Book Award. He has written for the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Atlantic, Nation, and Wall Street Journal, among others. Cole lives in Washington, DC.
Jon Wiener is a radio host at KPFK, a contributing editor to The Nation magazine and teaches 20th century US history at the University of California – Irvine. He sued the FBI for their files on John Lennon — the story is told in his book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files and at the website www.LennonFBIfiles.com. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court before most of the outstanding issues were settled in 1997.
More about the book:
“In Engines of Liberty, David Cole turns constitutional law on its head. With his characteristic intelligence and clarity, Cole demonstrates that the law changes from the bottom up, not the top down, and that it is citizens, not judges, who are the ultimate custodians of our nation’s laws.”
—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath and The Nine
“Engines of Liberty is a masterful account of how civil society organizations work, and a passionate argument for why they are so important to our democracy. My hope is that Engines of Liberty inspires a new generation of activists to rise up and launch their own campaigns for civil liberties.”
—Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union
In ENGINES OF CHANGE: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law (Basic Books; March 29, 2016), David Cole argues that citizens activists joined together are the true drivers of constitutional change. Drawing on interviews with participants in the most successful rights movements of the last quarter century, he shows that time and again, groups of ordinary Americans confronting long odds have managed to transform the nation’s highest law. And they have done so largely through advocacy outside the federal courts.
This event is presented by the ACLU of Southern CA and the Center for Constitutional Rights with support from the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, California Common Cause, Courage Campaign, Equality Federation, LA Progressive, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and Ward AME Church.
-
How did marriage equality go from unthinkable to inevitable?
-
How did the right to bear arms, dismissed as a fraud by Warren Burger in 1991, become a constitutional right in 2008?
-
What caused President Bush to curtail his most aggressive counterterror measures after 9/11?
-
How might constitutional law change in the post-Scalia era?
Join us to celebrate the publication of Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activist to Make Constitutional Law, in which David Cole, a noted constitutional scholar, lawyer, and contributor to the New York Review of Books, New Yorker, and The Nation, shows how citizens, acting together, have successfully transformed constitutional law.
Wednesday, June 15 at 7pm
Ward AME Church, 1177 W 25th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Book will be available for purchase at the door (cash or credit)
Free admission with ticket reservation – RSVP now
David Cole is the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. A leading civil liberties lawyer, he is the author of No Equal Justice and Enemy Aliens, which won the American Book Award. He has written for the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Atlantic, Nation, and Wall Street Journal, among others. Cole lives in Washington, DC.
Jon Wiener is a radio host at KPFK, a contributing editor to The Nation magazine and teaches 20th century US history at the University of California – Irvine. He sued the FBI for their files on John Lennon — the story is told in his book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files and at the website www.LennonFBIfiles.com. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court before most of the outstanding issues were settled in 1997.
More about the book:
“In Engines of Liberty, David Cole turns constitutional law on its head. With his characteristic intelligence and clarity, Cole demonstrates that the law changes from the bottom up, not the top down, and that it is citizens, not judges, who are the ultimate custodians of our nation’s laws.”
—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath and The Nine
“Engines of Liberty is a masterful account of how civil society organizations work, and a passionate argument for why they are so important to our democracy. My hope is that Engines of Liberty inspires a new generation of activists to rise up and launch their own campaigns for civil liberties.”
—Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union
In ENGINES OF CHANGE: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law (Basic Books; March 29, 2016), David Cole argues that citizens activists joined together are the true drivers of constitutional change. Drawing on interviews with participants in the most successful rights movements of the last quarter century, he shows that time and again, groups of ordinary Americans confronting long odds have managed to transform the nation’s highest law. And they have done so largely through advocacy outside the federal courts.