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Since 9/11, the U.S. government has acted in a variety of ways--some obvious, some nearly invisible--to increase its surveillance and detention power over American citizens and residents. While most of us have made our peace with the various new restrictions on our civil liberties after 9/11, we have done it without really understanding what those restrictions are or the extent of their reach. Moreover, we tend to think that if the national security state overreaches, we shouldn't worry--the courts will come to the rescue and rein it in. In Taking Liberties, Susan Herman explains how this came to be. Beginning in late 2001, the Bush Administration undertook a series of measures, some of which were understandable and valid given the context, to expand federal surveillance authority. Yet as she shows through a series of gripping episodes involving ordinary Americans, they overreached to the point eroding basic constitutional liberties. Herman spells out in vivid detail why all Americans should be worried about the governmental dragnet that has slowly and at times imperceptibly expanded its coverage over the American public. The erosion of civil liberties doesn't just impact immigrants, Americans of Middle Eastern descent, or Guantanamo detainees, but any American who appears to be engaging in provocative political activity. Taking Liberties is a wake-up call for all Americans, who remain largely unaware of the post-9/11 surveillance regime's insidious and continuing growth.

Whether the Prison Litigation Reform Act was well aimed or effective is a challenging question. Advertised as stemming a flood of trivial prisoners' lawsuits in the federal courts, the PLRA erected obstacles to serious as well as frivolous complaints – like claims of racial discrimination or sexual abuse by prison staff that leaves no physical injury. And much of the time saved by dismissing cases is spent interpreting the PLRA's perplexing procedural rules. More and more often, courts are leaving prisoners (and pretrial detainees) to the vagaries of cash-starved prison systems. The author brings her years as a prisoners' rights litigator and Pro Se Law Clerk to bear on the issue of whether, in these days of economic recession and mass incarceration, it is prison rather than prison litigation that is truly in need of reform.

Another myth floating around the confirmation hearings held that [John G. Roberts] is a cipher and we do not know what kind of decisions he will make as a justice. Roberts has, of course, left a long paper trail of memos from his years of service within the government (not all of which have been released to the Senate). He says that these memos don't count because as a lawyer for the Reagan and Bush administrations, he was not necessarily expressing his own beliefs. This slate-wiping is too convenient and too broad. The briefs Roberts wrote for the government do indeed represent his clients' choice of position. But many of the memos Roberts wrote urged his employers to take more extreme positions to resist expansive enforcement of civil-rights laws, for example. In some memos, he certainly seemed to be writing in his own voice: \"I honestly find it troubling . . .\" The memos show that, as his colleague Bruce Fein said, he was one of an \"ideological band of brothers.\" Roberts contends that he can put aside his firmly held conservative views when he dons his judicial robes. I don't doubt that he intends to be open-minded, but I do doubt that he can or will shed his partiality. Kenneth Manning, a political scientist who has studied the 190 decisions Roberts has made so far as an appellate judge, concludes that his positions are \"very\" conservative on criminal justice matters (compared with other appellate judges, not exactly a liberal group), and \"exceptionally\" conservative in cases involving civil rights and civil liberties.

O.J. Simpson, in case you have been marooned on a desert island for the last several years, was acquitted by a criminal jury but found liable by a civil jury. Ditto subway shooter Bernhard Goetz, who got only a slap on the wrist in his criminal prosecution and then faced his victims in a civil trial. Former Los Angeles police officer Stacey Koon was acquitted on state charges of beating Rodney King and then convicted on federal charges of violating King's civil rights. And what about the multiple prosecutions of the Menendez brothers for the murder of their parents? Or accused Connecticut rapist Alex Kelly? Lawyers will give you suitably technical explanations for why each of these cases is an exception to the Constitution: mistrials after a hung jury (the Menendez brothers and Alex Kelly) don't count. Civil trials aren't covered by the double jeopardy clause because they don't put anyone in \"jeopardy\" for an \"offense.\" Koon and Nelson? The double jeopardy clause only applies if the two trials are for the \"same offense.\" Although based on the same conduct, the federal offenses charged against both Koon and Nelson were defined differently from the state offenses. And, in any event, successive state and federal prosecutions are legally excused under the most superbly technical exception: The \"dual sovereignty\" doctrine, which says it isn't double jeopardy if you have been tried for the same offense by two (or more) different jurisdictions.

To prevent the accumulation of too much power in any one branch, the Constitution creates an elaborate system of checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government, including an independent judiciary, and between the federal and state governments. [...]federal judges could not exercise their judicial review power without organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (\"Because Freedom Can't Defend Itself\") bringing lawsuits. [...]without the Constitution, the federal judges, the civil liberties lawyers, and the members of the public who have been demonstrating at airports and in the streets would lack a decisive basis for arguing that elections do not confer the authority to undermine our cherished blessings of liberty and equality. Susan N. Herman is president of the American Civil Liberties Union and Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where she teaches courses on constitutional law.