ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the Founders quickly came to believe that, even in a written constitution awarding limited powers, certain areas of personal autonomy, choice, and security—certain liberties—require additional, more explicit, protection. It describes how civil liberties were conceived early in US history. The chapter looks at freedom of expression as it relates to both speech and press, then at freedom of religion and conscience, and then at the protections afforded to criminal suspects and defendants. It describes that the battle to expand civil liberties has been fought over the familiar terrain of federalism. The chapter concludes by asking how our commitment to civil liberties squares with the fact that the US holds more people in jails and prisons that any other country in the world. Freedom of expression is absolutely fundamental to the idea of popular government.
