States of Exception in American History

"Americans take great pride in their respect for the rule of law and our Constitution. And yet too frequently specific legal rights and procedures protected by the Constitution have been suspended on the grounds of emergency, and we have tolerated the longer exclusion of groups such as African-Americans from the full protection of our laws and the Constitution. This collection of essays by leading historians and scholars of law and American history, explores what it means for a democracy to suspend the rule of law and how Americans both justify and dispute these suspensions. Too often they are treated as isolated events, ignoring larger patterns of exclusion from the rule of law, as well as the threat they pose to democracy. In this book the authors seek to weave together these stories to show what these suspensions tell us about the limits of American democracy"--