TO GET HELP: www.acluarkansas.org/get-help. We like to say that our client is the Bill of Rights and its principles. Civil liberties are what protect the people from the power of government and what John Stuart Mill called the “tyranny of the majority.” Government, in the form of legislative bodies, law enforcement agencies, and even schools, has a great capacity to affect the lives of those under
its control. Yet because we possess civil liberties, these government agencies are barred from doing things that they might be inclined to do. For example, a city council may decide to prohibit public speech critical of the mayor, but that law will be struck down under the First Amendment as a violation of free speech. A wayward police officer may decide to enter and search your home on a whim and without a warrant, but whatever contraband she may find will be excluded from evidence because of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant. And a school board, consisting only of people of one religious faith, may decide that schoolchildren must recite that faith’s prayers, but that policy will be struck down under the First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause,” which protects us from government establishment of religion. Civil liberties protect us from other people who would like to impose their will on us, as well. Even though a majority of the people in a city may agree with the actions of either the city council or the police officer or the school board in the above scenarios, the civil liberties of those adversely affected cannot be breached. And even though the mayor’s critics may be few, and the subject of the house search may have committed a crime, and there is only one child in the school district of a different religious faith, the civil liberties of these individuals are protected under our Constitution and Bill of Rights. To GET HELP: www.acluarkansas.org/gethelp.
