num_pages: 320
description: From the national legal director of the ACLU an essential guidebook for anyone seeking to stand up for fundamental civil liberties and rightsOne of Washington Post 's Notable Nonfiction Books of 2016In an age of executive overreach what role do American citizens have in safeguarding our Constitution and defending liberty? Must we rely on the federal courts and the Supreme Court above all to protect our rights? In Engines of Liberty  the esteemed legal scholar David Cole argues that we all have a part to play in the grand civic dramas of our era -- and in a revised introduction and conclusion he proposes specific tactics for fighting Donald Trump's policies.Examining the most successful rights movements of the last thirty years Cole reveals how groups of ordinary Americans confronting long odds have managed time and time again to convince the courts to grant new rights and protect existing ones. Engines of Liberty is a fundamentally new explanation of how our Constitution works and the part citizens play in it.
language: English
title: Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law
publisher: Basic Books