Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties

(Hardback)

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In October 1948, 11 leaders of the Communist Party-USA were convicted of conspiring, in contravention of the 1940 Smith Act, to advocate the revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. government....Belknap recounts the trial in its fullest context, beginning in the late 1930's with the origins of the Smith Act, and ending with the last government attacks upon the Communist Party in the late 1950's. In the process, he expertly surveys a politico-judicial conflict that figures most prominently in the history of American civil liberties.-Library Journal
"In October 1948, 11 leaders of the Communist Party-USA were convicted of conspiring, in contravention of the 1940 Smith Act, to advocate the revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. government....Belknap recounts the trial in its fullest context, beginning in the late 1930's with the origins of the Smith Act, and ending with the last government attacks upon the Communist Party in the late 1950's. In the process, he expertly surveys a politico-judicial conflict that figures most prominently in the history of American civil liberties."-Library Journal

Author Bio

MICHAL R. BELKNAP is Professor of Law at California Western School of Law and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. The author of Cold War Political Justice and Federal Law and Southern Order, his most recent book is To Improve the Administration of Justice: A History of the American Judicature Society.