In this chapter, we examined the role that our fundamental liberties and rights play within the polity. Civil liberties protect us from government intrusions into our individual lives with guarantees as listed in the Bill of Rights, like the First Amendment’s freedoms of speech, press, religion and assembly. A series of court cases in the 20^th century slowly incorporated these liberties, which expanded and refined the definitions of these fundamental liberties, forever changing historical contexts. For example, broad interpretations of free speech, rights to privacy and very limited restrictions placed on prior restraint of the press became the norm in court interpretations by the 1970’s. Then a conservative counter-reaction occurred within the elected and appointed offices of the national government leading to the advance of restrictions on civil liberties as it became clear that “not all speech was protected” and the right of privacy as interpreted in the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision was subject to restriction as far as access to abortion procedures were concerned.

     The second half of the chapter was dedicated to a presentation of those civil rights which serve as calls for government intervention on our individual behalf to ensure equal treatment for all within our society. This process began with the Civil War Amendments, especially the 14^th Amendment’s due process clause. However, for the first 100 years the courts took an economic based interpretation of this clause which served to hinder rather than help the cause of individual civil rights. By the 1960’s though, a new court with a new agenda had effectively sounded the death knell for Jim Crow segregation in the South with the landmark Brown v. Board (1954) decision overturning the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) doctrine of “separate but equal.” Energetic presidents Kennedy and Johnson, along with the Congress, spearheaded the winds of change with a series of acts which collectively enfranchised the African-American South and set up a system of affirmative action to address racial and gender inequalities. By the late 1970’s, however, a conservative reacted with cases like Bakke in 1978 and the Rehnquist court’s roll back on affirmative action since the 1980’s.