
Bowling Alone, the title of Robert Putnam's 1995 article (later a bestselling book) perfectly captured a sense of national unease: Somewhere along the way, America had become a nation divided by apathy, and the bonds that held together civil society were disappearing...

A specialist in constitutional law and civil liberties, Breslin (Skidmore College) first sets out the 1861 case in which Lincoln suspended habeus corpus on the basis of national security, and the US Supreme Court determined that the president has no such constitutional authority...