American Civil Liberties Union

• Author: Norman Dorsen
• Pages: 78-79

Page 78

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the most important national organization dedicated to the protection of individual liberty. It was founded in 1920 by a distinguished group that included ROGER BALDWIN, Jane Addams, FELIX FRANKFURTER, Helen Keller, Scott Nearing, and Norman Thomas.

The principles of the ACLU are contained in the BILL OF RIGHTS : the right to free expression, above all, the freedom to dissent from the official view and majority opinion; the right to equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion, national origin, or physical handicap; the right to DUE PROCESS in encounters with government institutions?courts, schools, police, bureaucracy?and with the repositories of great private power; the right to be let alone?to be secure from spying, from the unwarranted collection of personal information, and from interference in private lives.

The ACLU has participated in many controversial cases. It represented John Scopes when he was fired for teaching evolution; it fought for the rights of Sacco and Vanzetti; it defended the Scottsboro Boys, who were denied a FAIR TRIAL for alleged rape (see POWELL V. ALABAMA; NORRIS V. ALABAMA) ; it fought the Customs Bureau when it banned James Joyce's Ulysses (see UNITED STATES V." ULYSSES "); it opposed the censorship of the Pentagon Papers (see NEW YORK TIMES V. UNITED STATES) and religious exercises in schools.

The ACLU has supported racial and religious minorities, the right of LABOR to organize, and equal treatment for women, and it has opposed arbitrary treatment of persons in closed institutions such as mental patients, prisoners, military personnel, and students.

The concept of CIVIL LIBERTIES, as understood by the ACLU, has developed over the years. For example, in the 1960s it declared that CAPITAL PUNISHMENT violated civil liberties because of the finality and randomness of executions; that military conscription, which substantially restricts individual autonomy, violated civil liberties except during war or national emergency; and that the undeclared VIETNAM WAR was illegal because of failure to abide by constitutional procedures for committing the country to hostilities.

On the other hand, while endorsing many legal protections for poor people, the ACLU has never held that poverty itself violated civil liberties. In addition, since a cardinal precept of the ACLU is political nonpartisanship, it does not endorse or oppose judicial nominees or...