The Rights of the People, by David Shipler

David Shipler published The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties in 2011, but the issues he addresses and questions he raises are no less important and timely in 2017, maybe even more so.  Shipler is not a lawyer, but applies his extensive journalistic experience--he is a Pulitzer Prize winner--to this treatment of constitutional rights and liberties.

At the core of The Rights of the People is, as the subtitle suggests, the balance between the protection of  our constitutional rights and our desire for safety, security, and law enforcement.  Many Americans live with the feeling that if they didn't do anything wrong, they have nothing to hide.  Shipler is not as concerned with whether someone did something wrong as with whether constitutional rights and procedures are honored.

Shipler discusses a range of scenarios in which this balance can be tricky.  Stop and frisk.  Traffic stops.  Airport searches.  Electronic surveillance.  Search and seizure.  In almost any case, we can point to examples of searches that may cross constitutional lines yet yield actionable results.  But there are many more examples in which no crime occurred, and no evidence was turned up, yet people were stopped, searched, inconvenienced, mistreated, or detained, all in violation of their constitutional rights.

Shipler is no conservative.  I suspect he's all-in for Obama and his ilk.  Partisanship aside, Shipler is, more importantly, on the side of the Constitution.  I fully admire and respect the purity of his approach to constitutionalism.  The stories he tells illustrate the problem.  Given a search or arrest that doesn't meet constitutional muster, yet successfully turns up incriminating evidence or results in the arrest of a criminal, Shipler is more concerned with constitutional matters than in prosecution or apprehension.  Again, it's an admirable position.  But I still struggle with the consequences.

It's tempting to take a consequentialist position when, for instance, a clearly guilty terrorist or drug dealer is nabbed.  Sure, the investigation and arrest may not have been completely legit, but at least they got the bad guy.  This is the exact problem that Shipler addresses.  I'm not particularly satisfied with his treatment; many people will call him soft on crime.  But his voice and perspective are needed to keep law enforcement honest and keep alive a commitment to our constitutional rights.