National Security, Individual Rights and the Law

From: Gilder Lehrman Institute [mailto:gli@gilderlehrman.org]


A Panel Discussion
"Aliens and Sedition: National Security, Individual Rights and the Law in Historical Perspective"
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York
May 14, 2008

The war on terror has sparked a vigorous debate over how many of our civil liberties, if any, should be sacrificed to keep the public safe from terrorist attack. The conflict between civil liberties and national security has come up before in American history — most notably in the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the eighteenth century, President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Join moderator Richard Menaker (Menaker & Herrmann LLP) as he discusses this issue with panelists Alan Brinkley (Columbia University), Joanne Freeman (Yale University), Thomas Kean (Chairman of the 9/11 Commission and former Governor of New Jersey), and Mark Neely (Pennsylvania State University).

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