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Kolmogorov complexity
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This definition can be extended to define a notion of randomness for infinite sequences from a finite alphabet. These algorithmically random sequences can be defined in three equivalent ways. One way uses an effective analogue of measure theory; another uses effective martingales. The third way defines an infinite sequence to be random if the prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity of its initial segments grows quickly enough — there must be a constant c such that the complexity of an initial segment of length n is always at least n−c. This definition, unlike the definition of randomness for a finite string, is not affected by which universal machine is used to define prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity.
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Kolmogorov complexity
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Relation to entropy
For dynamical systems, entropy rate and algorithmic complexity of the trajectories are related by a theorem of Brudno, that the equality holds for almost all . It can be shown that for the output of Markov information sources, Kolmogorov complexity is related to the entropy of the information source. More precisely, the Kolmogorov complexity of the output of a Markov information source, normalized by the length of the output, converges almost surely (as the length of the output goes to infinity) to the entropy of the source. Conditional versions
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Kolmogorov complexity
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The conditional Kolmogorov complexity of two strings is, roughly speaking, defined as the Kolmogorov complexity of x given y as an auxiliary input to the procedure. There is also a length-conditional complexity , which is the complexity of x given the length of x'' as known/input. See also
Important publications in algorithmic information theory
Berry paradox
Code golf
Data compression
Descriptive complexity theory
Grammar induction
Inductive inference
Kolmogorov structure function
Levenshtein distance
Solomonoff's theory of inductive inference
Sample entropy Notes References Further reading
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Kolmogorov complexity
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External links
The Legacy of Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov
Chaitin's online publications
Solomonoff's IDSIA page
Generalizations of algorithmic information by J. Schmidhuber
Tromp's lambda calculus computer model offers a concrete definition of K()]
Universal AI based on Kolmogorov Complexity by M. Hutter:
David Dowe's Minimum Message Length (MML) and Occam's razor pages. Computability theory
Descriptive complexity
Measures of complexity
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Amathus
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Amathus or Amathous () was an ancient city and one of the ancient royal cities of Cyprus until about 300 BC. Some of its impressive remains can be seen today on the southern coast in front of Agios Tychonas, about west of Larnaca and east of Limassol. Its ancient cult sanctuary of Aphrodite was the second most important in Cyprus, her homeland, after Paphos. Archaeological work has recently been continued at the site and many finds are exhibited in the Limassol Museum. History Pre-history and ancient era
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The pre-history of Amathus survives in both myth and archaeology. Archaeology has detected human activity from the earliest Iron Age, BC.
The city's legendary founder was Cinyras, linked with the birth of Adonis, who called the city after his mother Amathous. According to a version of the Ariadne legend noted by Plutarch, Theseus abandoned Ariadne at Amathousa, where she died giving birth to her child and was buried in a sacred tomb. According to Plutarch's source, Amathousians called the sacred grove where her shrine was situated the Wood of Aphrodite Ariadne. More purely Hellenic myth would have Amathus settled instead by one of the sons of Heracles, thus accounting for the fact that he was worshiped there.
It was said in antiquity that the people of Amathus were autochthonous, most likely Eteocyprian or "Pelasgian". Their non-Greek language is confirmed on the site by Eteocypriot inscriptions in the Cypriot syllabary which alone in the Aegean world survived the Bronze Age collapse and continued to be used down to the 4th century BC.
Amathus was built on the coastal cliffs with a natural harbour and flourished at an early date, soon requiring several cemeteries. Greeks from Euboea left their pottery at Amathus from the 10th century BC. During the post-Phoenician era of the 8th century BC, a palace was erected and a port was also constructed, which served the trade with the Greeks and the Levantines. A special burial ground for infants, a tophet served the culture of the Phoenicians. For the Hellenes, high on the cliff a temple was built, which became a worship site devoted to Aphrodite, in her particular local presence as Aphrodite Amathusia along with a bearded male Aphrodite called Aphroditos. The excavators discovered the final stage of the Temple of Aphrodite, also known as Aphrodisias, which dates approximately to the 1st century BC. According to the legend, it was where festive Adonia took place, in which athletes competed in hunting wild boars during sport competitions; they also competed in dancing and singing, all to the honour of Adonis.
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The earliest remains hitherto found on the site are tombs of the early Iron Age period of Graeco-Phoenician influences (1000-600 BC). Amathus is identified with Kartihadasti (Phoenician "New-Town") in the Cypriote tribute-list of Esarhaddon of Assyria (668 BC). It certainly maintained strong Phoenician sympathies, for it was its refusal to join the philhellene league of Onesilos of Salamis which provoked the revolt of Cyprus from Achaemenid Persia in 500-494 BC, when Amathus was besieged unsuccessfully and avenged itself by the capture and execution of Onesilos. Herodotus reports
"Because he had besieged them, the Amathusians cut off Onesilos’ head and brought it to Amathous, where they hung it above the gates. As it hung there empty, a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with honeycomb. When they sought advice about this event, an oracle told them to take the head down and bury it, and to make annual sacrifice to Onesilos as a hero, saying that it would be better for them if they did this. The Amathusians did as they were told and still perform these rites in my day." (Histories 5.114)
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Amathus was a rich and densely populated kingdom with a flourishing agriculture (grain and sheep) and copper mines situated very close to the northeast Kalavasos.
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Hellenistic era
About 385-380 BC, the philhellene Evagoras of Salamis was similarly opposed by Amathus, allied with Citium and Soli; and even after Alexander the city resisted annexation, and was bound over to give hostages to Seleucus. Its political importance was now ended but its temple of Adonis and Aphrodite Amathusia remained famous in Roman times. The epithet Amathusia in Roman poetry often means little more than "Cypriote," but attesting to the fame of the city.
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From the 4th century BC the pedestals of two sculptures donated by the last Basileus of Amathous, Androkles, representing his two sons, Orestheus and Andragoras, have survived. Their inscriptions are in both Eteocyprian and Greek languages.
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The decline of Amathus is often measured by the Ptolemaic gifts to Argos, where Amathus donated only 40 drachmas in 170-160 BC, but Kition and Salamis gave 208, Kourion 172, and Paphos 100. However, this figure contradicts the archaeologic evidence of new buildings in this period including a balneion, a bath, a gymnasium, as well as fortifications of the Acropolis, including a new tower. The port of Paphos appears to have lost traffic compared to Amathus in the Ptolemaic period, an indication that Paphos, as the capital of the island, perhaps offered fewer drachmas than the other cities for different reasons, like Amathus.
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Roman era In the Roman era Amathus became the capital of one of the four administrative regions of Cyprus. A Roman temple was built in the 1st century AD on top of the Hellenistic predecessor. The temple facilities remained so important in Roman times that 'Amathusia' was used as a synonym for 'Cypriot'.
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Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Later, in the 4th century AD, Amasus became the see of a Christian bishop and continued to flourish until the Byzantine period. Of its bishops, Heliodorus was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and Alexander at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. In the late 6th century, Saint Ioannis Eleimonas (John the Charitable), protector of the Knights of St. John, was born in Amathus and after 614 sent Theodorus, bishop of Amathus, to Jerusalem to ransom some slaves.
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Today, Amathus is a see of the Church of Cyprus and is also listed (under the name "Amathus in Cypro", to distinguish it from "Amathus in Transjordan") as a titular see by the Catholic Church, which however, in line with the practice adopted after the Second Vatican Council, has made no appointments to the bishopric since the death of the last Latin titular bishop in 1984.
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Anastasius Sinaita, the famous 7th-century prolific monk of Saint Catherine's Monastery, was born here. It is thought that he left Cyprus after the 649 Arab conquest of the island, setting out for the Holy Land, and eventually becoming a monk on Sinai.
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Amathus declined and was already almost deserted when Richard Plantagenet won Cyprus by a victory there over Isaac Comnenus in 1191. The tombs were plundered and the stones from the beautiful edifices were brought to Limassol to be used for new constructions. Much later, in 1869, a great number of blocks of stone from Amathus were used for the construction of the Suez Canal. A ruined Byzantine church marks its site.
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In modern times
A new settlement close to Amathus but further inland, Agios Tychonas, is named after the bishop Saint Tychon of Amathus. The site of the ruins is within the borders of this village, though the expansion of the Limassol tourist area has threatened the ruins: it is speculated that some of the hotels are on top of the Amathus necropolis. The site and archaeology
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The city had vanished, except for fragments of wall and of a great stone urn on the acropolis, dating from the 6th century BC of which a similar vessel was taken to the Musée du Louvre in 1867. It is tall and weighs 14 tons. It was made from a single piece of stone and has four curved handles carved with bulls. In the 1870s, Luigi Palma di Cesnola excavated the necropolis of Amathus, as elsewhere in Cyprus, enriching the early collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; some objects went to the British Museum. More modern archaeological joint Cypriote-French excavations started in 1980 and still continue. The Acropolis, the Temple of Aphrodite, the agora, the city's walls, the basilica and the port have all been excavated.
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Further archaeological objects found during the excavations are preserved at both the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia and the Limassol District Archaeological Museum.
In the agora there are marble columns decorated with spirals and a huge paved squares. On the coastal side of the city there is an Early Christian basilica with mosaic floors decorated with semi-precious stones. Further, near the terraced road leading to the Temple, situated on the top of the cliff, several houses built in a row dating to the Hellenistic period have been discovered. At the east and west extremes of the city the two acropoleis are situated where a number of tombs have been found, many of which are intact.
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Two small sanctuaries, with terracotta votive offerings of Graeco-Phoenician age, lie not far off, but the location of the great shrines of Adonis and Aphrodite have not been identified (M. Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, i. ch.1). Gallery Notes References
Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopaedia of Classical Sites, 1976: "Amathous, Cyprus"
Municipality of Limassol External links
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http://www.mcw.gov.cy/mcw/DA/DA.nsf/0/D20ED526826AB796C225719B00374A92?OpenDocument
Agias Tychonas: Amathus (English)
http://www.anastasiosofsinai.org/index.html (English)
StoryMap about Amathous (A. Cannavò, A. Rabot) Cities in ancient Cyprus
Archaeological sites in Cyprus
Former populated places in Cyprus
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Alexander Anderson (mathematician)
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Alexander Anderson ( in Aberdeen – in Paris) was a Scottish mathematician. Life
He was born in Aberdeen, possibly in 1582, according to a print which suggests he was aged 35 in 1617. It is unknown where he was educated, but it is likely that he initially studied writing and philosophy (the "belles lettres") in his home city of Aberdeen.
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Alexander Anderson (mathematician)
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He then went to the continent, and was a professor of mathematics in Paris by the start of the seventeenth century. There he published or edited, between the years 1612 and 1619, various geometric and algebraic tracts. He described himself as having "more wisdom than riches" in the dedication of Vindiciae Archimedis (1616). He was first cousin of David Anderson of Finshaugh, a celebrated mathematician, and David Anderson's daughter was the mother of mathematician James Gregory.
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Alexander Anderson (mathematician)
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Work
He was selected by the executors of François Viète to revise and edit Viète's manuscript works. Viète died in 1603, and it is unclear if Anderson knew him, but his eminence was sufficient to attract the attention of the dead man's executors. Anderson corrected and expanded upon Viète's manuscripts, which extended known geometry to the new algebra, which used general symbols to represent quantities.
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Alexander Anderson (mathematician)
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Publications
The known works of Anderson amount to six thin quarto volumes, and as the last of them was published in 1619, it is probable that the author died soon after that year, but the precise date is unknown. He wrote other works that have since been lost. From his last work it appears he wrote another piece, "A Treatise on the Mensuration of Solids," and copies of two other works, Ex. Math. and Stereometria Triangulorum Sphæricorum, were in the possession of Sir Alexander Hume until the after the middle of the seventeenth century.
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Alexander Anderson (mathematician)
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1612: Supplementum Apollonii Redivivi
1615: Ad Angularum Sectionem Analytica Theoremata F. Vieta
1615: Pro Zetetico Apolloniani
1615: Francisci Vietae Fontenaeensis
1616: Vindiciae Archimedis
1619: Alexandri Andersoni Exercitationum Mathematicarum Decas Prima See also
Marin Getaldić
Denis Henrion
Frans van Schooten References Attribution: Further reading
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1580s births
1620 deaths
People from Aberdeen
Algebraists
Geometers
Scottish mathematicians
17th-century Scottish people
Scottish scholars and academics
University of Paris faculty
17th-century Scottish scientists
17th-century Scottish mathematicians
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Ammianus Marcellinus
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Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the Res Gestae, chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, although only the sections covering the period 353 to 378 survive. Biography
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Ammianus Marcellinus
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Ammianus was born in the East Mediterranean, possibly in Syria or Phoenicia, around 330. His native language is unknown but he likely knew Greek as well as Latin. The surviving books of his history cover the years 353 to 378.
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Ammianus served as an officer in the army of the emperors Constantius II and Julian, he served in Gaul (Julian) and in the east (twice for Constantius, once under Julian). He professes to have been "a former soldier and a Greek" (miles quondam et graecus), and his enrollment among the elite protectores domestici (household guards) shows that he was of middle class or higher birth. Consensus is that Ammianus probably came from a curial family, but it is also possible that he was the son of a comes Orientis of the same family name. He entered the army at an early age, when Constantius II was emperor of the East, and was sent to serve under Ursicinus, governor of Nisibis in Mesopotamia, and magister militum. Ammianus campaigned in the East twice under Ursicinus.
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He travelled with Ursicinus to Italy when Ursicinus was called on by Constantius to begin an expedition against Silvanus. Silvanus had been forced by the allegedly false accusations of his enemies into proclaiming himself emperor in Gaul. Ursicinus had one of his men assassinate Silvanus, restoring Gaul to Constantius. He then stayed in Gaul to help install Julian as Caesar of Gaul, Spain and Britain. Ammianus probably met Julian for the first time while serving on Ursicinus' staff in Gaul.
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In 359 Constantius sent Ursicinus back to the east to help in the defence against a Persian invasion led by king Shapur II himself. Ammianus returned with his commander to the East and again served Ursicinus as a staff officer. Ursicinus, although he was the more experienced commander, was placed under the command of Sabinianus, the Magister Peditum of the east. The two did not get along, resulting in a lack of cooperation between the Limitanei (border regiments) of Mesopotamia and Osrhoene under Ursicinus' command and the comitatus (field army) of Sabinianus. While on a mission near Nisibis, Ammianus spotted a Persian patrol which was about to try and capture Ursicinus, he was able to warn his commander in time. In an attempt to locate the Persian Royal Army Ursicinus sent Ammianus to Jovinianus, the semi-independent governor of Corduene, and a friend of Ursicinus. Ammianus successfully located the Persian main body and reported his findings to Ursicinus.
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After his mission in Corduene, Ammianus accompanied his commander when the latter rode out from his headquarters at Amida on a mission to make sure the bridges across the Euphrates were demolished. They were attacked by the Persian vanguard who had made a night march in an attempt to catch the Romans at Amida off guard. After a protracted cavalry battle the Romans were scattered, Ursicinus evaded capture and fled to Melitene while Ammianus barely made it back to Amida with a wounded comrade. The Persians started to besiege the city. When it fell Ammianus barely escaped with his life.
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When Ursicinus was dismissed from his military post by Constantius, Ammianus too seems to have retired from the military; however, reevaluation of his participation in Julian's Persian campaign has led modern scholarship to suggest that he continued his service but did not for some reason include the period in his history.
He accompanied Julian, for whom he expresses enthusiastic admiration, in his campaigns against the Alamanni and the Sassanids.
After Julian's death, Ammianus accompanied the retreat of the new emperor, Jovian, as far as Antioch.
He was residing in Antioch in 372 when a certain Theodorus was thought to have been identified the successor to the emperor Valens by divination.
Speaking as an alleged eyewitness, Marcellinus recounts how Theodorus and several others were made to confess their deceit through the use of torture, and cruelly punished.
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He eventually settled in Rome and began the Res Gestae. The precise year of his death is unknown, but scholarly consensus places it somewhere between 392 and 400 at the latest.
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Modern scholarship generally describes Ammianus as a pagan who was tolerant of Christianity. Marcellinus writes of Christianity as being a pure and simple religion that demands only what is just and mild, and when he condemns the actions of Christians, he does not do so on the basis of their Christianity as such. His lifetime was marked by lengthy outbreaks of sectarian and dogmatic strife within the new state-backed faith, often with violent consequences (especially the Arian controversy) and these conflicts sometimes appeared unworthy to him, though it was territory where he could not risk going very far in criticism, due to the growing and volatile political connections between the church and imperial power.
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He was not blind to the faults of Christians or of pagans; he observed in his Res Gestae that "no wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christian sects in general are to one another" and he condemns the emperor Julian for excessive attachment to (pagan) sacrifice, and for his edict effectively barring Christians from teaching posts.
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Work
While living in Rome in the 380s, Ammianus wrote a Latin history of the Roman empire from the accession of Nerva (96) to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople (378), in effect writing a continuation of the history of Tacitus. He presumably completed the work before 391, as at 22.16.12 he praises the Serapeum of Alexandria in Egypt as the glory of the empire; it was in that same year the Emperor granted the temple grounds to a Christian bishop, provoking pagans into barricading themselves in the temple, plundering its contents, and torturing Christians, ultimately destroying the temple.
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The Res Gestae (Rerum gestarum Libri XXXI) was originally composed of thirty-one books, but the first thirteen have been lost. The surviving eighteen books cover the period from 353 to 378. It constitutes the foundation of modern understanding of the history of the fourth century Roman Empire. It is lauded as a clear, comprehensive, and generally impartial account of events by a contemporary; like many ancient historians, however, Ammianus was in fact not impartial, although he expresses an intention to be so, and had strong moral and religious prejudices. Although criticised as lacking literary merit by his early biographers, he was in fact quite skilled in rhetoric, which significantly has brought the veracity of some of the Res Gestae into question.
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His work has suffered substantially from manuscript transmission. Aside from the loss of the first thirteen books, the remaining eighteen are in many places corrupt and lacunose. The sole surviving manuscript from which almost every other is derived is a ninth-century Carolingian text, Vatican lat. 1873 (V), produced in Fulda from an insular exemplar. The only independent textual source for Ammianus lies in Fragmenta Marbugensia (M), another ninth-century Frankish codex which was taken apart to provide covers for account-books during the fifteenth century. Only six leaves of M survive; however, before this manuscript was dismantled the Abbot of Hersfeld lent the manuscript to Sigismund Gelenius, who used it in preparing the text of the second Froben edition (G). The dates and relationship of V and M were long disputed until 1936 when R. P. Robinson demonstrated persuasively that V was copied from M. As L. D. Reynolds summarizes, "M is thus a fragment of the archetype; symptoms of an insular pre-archetype are evident."
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His handling from his earliest printers was little better. The editio princeps was printed in 1474 in Rome by Georg Sachsel and Bartholomaeus Golsch, which broke off at the end of Book 26. The next edition (Bologna, 1517) suffered from its editor's conjectures upon the poor text of the 1474 edition; the 1474 edition was pirated for the first Froben edition (Basle, 1518). It was not until 1533 that the last five books of Ammianus' history were put into print by Silvanus Otmar and edited by Mariangelus Accursius. The first modern edition was produced by C.U. Clark (Berlin, 1910–1913). The first English translations were by Philemon Holland in 1609, and later by C.D. Yonge in 1862.
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Reception Edward Gibbon judged Ammianus "an accurate and faithful guide, who composed the history of his own times without indulging the prejudices and passions which usually affect the mind of a contemporary." But he also condemned Ammianus for lack of literary flair: "The coarse and undistinguishing pencil of Ammianus has delineated his bloody figures with tedious and disgusting accuracy." Austrian historian Ernst Stein praised Ammianus as "the greatest literary genius that the world produced between Tacitus and Dante".
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According to Kimberly Kagan, his accounts of battles emphasize the experience of the soldiers but at the cost of ignoring the bigger picture. As a result, it is difficult for the reader to understand why the battles he describes had the outcome they did. Ammianus' work contains a detailed description of the earthquake and tsunami of 365 in Alexandria, which devastated the metropolis and the shores of the eastern Mediterranean on 21 July 365. His report describes accurately the characteristic sequence of earthquake, retreat of the sea, and sudden incoming giant wave. Notes Citations Sources External links
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Works by Ammianus Marcellinus at Perseus Digital Library
Ammianus Marcellinus on-line project
Ammianus Marcellinus' works in Latin at the Latin Library
Ammianus Marcellinus' works in English at the Tertullian Project with introduction on the manuscripts
Bibliography for Ammianus Marcellinus at Bibliographia Latina Selecta compiled by M.G.M. van der Poel
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Ammianus Marcellinus
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330 births
390s deaths
4th-century births
4th-century Greek people
4th-century historians
4th-century Latin writers
4th-century Romans
Ancient Greeks in Rome
Ancient Roman equites
Ancient Roman soldiers
Late-Roman-era pagans
Latin historians
People of Roman Syria
People of the Roman–Sasanian Wars
Roman-era Greeks Year of birth uncertain
Year of death unknown
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American Civil Liberties Union
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". The ACLU works through litigation and lobbying, and has over 1,200,000 members, with an annual budget of over $300 million. Affiliates of the ACLU are active in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases where it considers civil liberties to be at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of amicus curiae briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation.
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American Civil Liberties Union
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In addition to representing persons and organizations in lawsuits, the ACLU lobbies for policy positions that have been established by its board of directors. Current positions of the ACLU include opposing the death penalty; supporting same-sex marriage and the right of LGBT people to adopt; supporting reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion rights; eliminating discrimination against women, minorities, and LGBT people; decarceration in the United States; supporting the rights of prisoners and opposing torture; and upholding the separation of church and state by opposing government preference for religion over non-religion or for particular faiths over others.
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American Civil Liberties Union
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Legally, the ACLU consists of two separate but closely affiliated nonprofit organizations, namely the American Civil Liberties Union, a 501(c)(4) social welfare group; and the ACLU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity. Both organizations engage in civil rights litigation, advocacy, and education, but only donations to the 501(c)(3) foundation are tax deductible, and only the 501(c)(4) group can engage in unlimited political lobbying. The two organizations share office space and employees.
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American Civil Liberties Union
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Overview
The ACLU was founded in 1920 by a committee including Helen Keller, Roger Nash Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Walter Nelles, Morris Ernst, Albert DeSilver, Arthur Garfield Hays, Jane Addams, Felix Frankfurter, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Rose Schneiderman. Its focus was on freedom of speech, primarily for anti-war protesters. It was founded in response to the controversial Palmer raids, which saw thousands of radicals arrested in matters which violated their constitutional search and seizures protection. During the 1920s, the ACLU expanded its scope to include protecting the free speech rights of artists and striking workers, and working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to mitigate discrimination. During the 1930s, the ACLU started to engage in work combating police misconduct and supporting Native American rights. Many of the ACLU's cases involved the defense of Communist Party members and Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1940, the ACLU leadership voted to exclude communists from its leadership positions, a decision rescinded in 1968. During World War II, the ACLU defended Japanese-American citizens, unsuccessfully trying to prevent their forcible relocation to internment camps. During the Cold War, the ACLU headquarters was dominated by anti-communists, but many local affiliates defended members of the Communist Party.
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By 1964, membership had risen to 80,000, and the ACLU participated in efforts to expand civil liberties. In the 1960s, the ACLU continued its decades-long effort to enforce separation of church and state. It defended several anti-war activists during the Vietnam War. The ACLU was involved in the Miranda case, which addressed conduct by police during interrogations, and in the New York Times case, which established new protections for newspapers reporting on government activities. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ACLU ventured into new legal areas, involving the rights of homosexuals, students, prisoners, and the poor. In the twenty-first century, the ACLU has fought the teaching of creationism in public schools and challenged some provisions of anti-terrorism legislation as infringing on privacy and civil liberties. Fundraising and membership spiked after the 2016 presidential election and the ACLU's current membership is more than 1.2 million.
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Organization Leadership
The ACLU is led by a president and an executive director, Deborah N. Archer and Anthony Romero, respectively, in 2021. The president acts as chair of the ACLU's board of directors, leads fundraising, and facilitates policy-setting. The executive director manages the day-to-day operations of the organization. The board of directors consists of 80 persons, including representatives from each state affiliate, as well as at-large delegates. The organization has its headquarters in 125 Broad Street, a 40-story skyscraper located in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
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The leadership of the ACLU does not always agree on policy decisions; differences of opinion within the ACLU leadership have sometimes grown into major debates. In 1937, an internal debate erupted over whether to defend Henry Ford's right to distribute anti-union literature. In 1939, a heated debate took place over whether to prohibit communists from serving in ACLU leadership roles. During the early 1950s and Cold War McCarthyism, the board was divided on whether to defend communists. In 1968, a schism formed over whether to represent Benjamin Spock's anti-war activism. In 1973, as the Watergate Scandal continued to unfold, leadership was initially divided over whether to call for President Nixon's impeachment and removal from office. In 2005, there was internal conflict about whether or not a gag rule should be imposed on ACLU employees to prevent publication of internal disputes.
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Funding
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In the year ending March 31, 2014, the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation had a combined income from support and revenue of $100.4 million, originating from grants (50.0%), membership donations (25.4%), donated legal services (7.6%), bequests (16.2%), and revenue (0.9%). Membership dues are treated as donations; members choose the amount they pay annually, averaging approximately $50 per member per year. In the year ending March 31, 2014, the combined expenses of the ACLU and ACLU Foundation were $133.4 million, spent on programs (86.2%), management (7.4%), and fundraising (8.2%). (After factoring in other changes in net assets of +$30.9 million, from sources such as investment income, the organization had an overall decrease in net assets of $2.1 million.) Over the period from 2011 to 2014 the ACLU Foundation, on the average, has accounted for roughly 70% of the combined budget, and the ACLU roughly 30%.
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The ACLU solicits donations to its charitable foundation. The ACLU is accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and the Charity Navigator has ranked the ACLU with a four-star rating. The local affiliates solicit their own funding; however, some also receive funds from the national ACLU, with the distribution and amount of such assistance varying from state to state. At its discretion, the national organization provides subsidies to smaller affiliates that lack sufficient resources to be self-sustaining; for example, the Wyoming ACLU chapter received such subsidies until April 2015, when, as part of a round of layoffs at the national ACLU, the Wyoming office was closed.
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In October 2004, the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation because the foundations had adopted language from the USA PATRIOT Act in their donation agreements, including a clause stipulating that none of the money would go to "underwriting terrorism or other unacceptable activities." The ACLU views this clause, both in federal law and in the donors' agreements, as a threat to civil liberties, saying it is overly broad and ambiguous.
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Due to the nature of its legal work, the ACLU is often involved in litigation against governmental bodies, which are generally protected from adverse monetary judgments; a town, state or federal agency may be required to change its laws or behave differently, but not to pay monetary damages except by an explicit statutory waiver. In some cases, the law permits plaintiffs who successfully sue government agencies to collect money damages or other monetary relief. In particular, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 leaves the government liable in some civil rights cases. Fee awards under this civil rights statute are considered "equitable relief" rather than damages, and government entities are not immune from equitable relief. Under laws such as this, the ACLU and its state affiliates sometimes share in monetary judgments against government agencies. In 2006, the Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act sought to prevent monetary judgments in the particular case of violations of church-state separation.
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The ACLU has received court awarded fees from opponents, for example, the Georgia affiliate was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments display from its courthouse; a second Ten Commandments case in the state, in a different county, led to a $74,462 judgment. The State of Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000, and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases. State affiliates
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Most of the organization's workload is performed by its local affiliates. There is at least one affiliate organization in each state, as well as one in Washington, D.C., and in Puerto Rico. California has three affiliates. The affiliates operate autonomously from the national organization; each affiliate has its own staff, executive director, board of directors, and budget. Each affiliate consists of two non-profit corporations: a 501(c)(3) corporation–called the ACLU Foundation–that does not perform lobbying, and a 501(c)(4) corporation–called ACLU–which is entitled to lobby. Both organizations share staff and offices
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ACLU affiliates are the basic unit of the ACLU's organization and engage in litigation, lobbying, and public education. For example, in a twenty-month period beginning January 2004, the ACLU's New Jersey chapter was involved in fifty-one cases according to their annual reportthirty-five cases in state courts, and sixteen in federal court. They provided legal representation in thirty-three of those cases, and served as amicus in the remaining eighteen. They listed forty-four volunteer attorneys who assisted them in those cases.
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Positions
The ACLU's official position statements included the following policies:
Affirmative action – The ACLU supports affirmative action.
Birth control and abortion – The ACLU supports the right to abortion, as established in the Roe v. Wade decision. The ACLU believes that everyone should have affordable access to the full range of contraceptive options. The ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project manages efforts related to reproductive rights.
Campaign funding – The ACLU believes that the current system is badly flawed, and supports a system based on public funding. The ACLU supports full transparency to identify donors. However, the ACLU opposes attempts to control political spending. The ACLU supported the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations and unions more political speech rights.
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Criminal law reform – The ACLU seeks an end to what it feels are excessively harsh sentences that "stand in the way of a just and equal society". The ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project focuses on this issue.
Death penalty – The ACLU is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. The ACLU's Capital Punishment Project focuses on this issue.
Free speech – The ACLU supports free speech, including the right to express unpopular or controversial ideas, such as flag desecration, racist or sexist views, etc. However, a leaked ACLU memo from June 2018 said that speech that can "inflict serious harms" and "impede progress toward equality" may be a lower priority for the organization.
Gun rights – The national ACLU's position is that the Second Amendment protects a collective right to own guns rather than an individual right, despite the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment is an individual right. The national organization's position is based on the phrases "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State". However, the ACLU opposes any effort to create a registry of gun owners and has worked with the National Rifle Association to prevent a registry from being created, and it has favored protecting the right to carry guns under the 4th Amendment.
HIV/AIDS – The policy of the ACLU is to "create a world in which discrimination based on HIV status has ended, people with HIV have control over their medical information and care, and where the government's HIV policy promotes public health and respect and compassion for people living with HIV and AIDS." This effort is managed by the ACLU's AIDS Project.
Human rights – The ACLU's Human Rights project advocates (primarily in an international context) for children's rights, disability rights, immigrants rights, gay rights, and other international obligations.
Immigrants' rights – The ACLU supports civil liberties for immigrants to the United States.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights – The ACLU's LGBT Rights Project supports equal rights for all gays and lesbians, and works to eliminate discrimination. The ACLU supports equal employment, housing, civil marriage and adoption rights for LGBT couples.
National security – The ACLU is opposed to compromising civil liberties in the name of national security. In this context, the ACLU has condemned government use of spying, indefinite detention without charge or trial, and government-sponsored torture. This effort is led by the ACLU's National Security Project.
Prisoners' rights – The ACLU's National Prison Project believes that incarceration should only be used as a last resort, and that prisons should focus on rehabilitation. The ACLU works to ensure that prisons treat prisoners in accordance with the Constitution and domestic law.
Privacy and technology – The ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology promotes "responsible uses of technology that enhance privacy protection", and opposes uses "that undermine our freedoms and move us closer to a surveillance society".
Racial issues – The ACLU's Racial Justice Program combats racial discrimination in all aspects of society, including the educational system, justice system, and the application of the death penalty. However, the ACLU opposes state censorship of the Confederate flag.
Religion – The ACLU supports the right of religious persons to practice their faiths without government interference. The ACLU believes the government should neither prefer religion over non-religion, nor favor particular faiths over others. The ACLU is opposed to school-led prayer, but protects students' right to pray in school. It opposes the use of religious beliefs to discriminate, such as refusing to provide abortion coverage or providing services to LGBT people.
Sex education – The ACLU opposes single-sex education options. It believes that single-sex education contributes to gender stereotyping and compares single-sex education to racial segregation.
Vaccination policy - The ACLU supports vaccine mandates for people using public facilities and businesses on the grounds that there is no right to harm others by spreading infectious diseases. Hence, the ACLU states, mandates are "permissible in many settings where the unvaccinated pose a risk to others, including schools and universities, hospitals, restaurants and bars, workplaces and businesses open to the public." The organization supports a public health-based approach to pandemic management and is opposed to criminalizing or jailing people with infectious diseases.
Voting rights – The ACLU believes that impediments to voting should be eliminated, particularly if they disproportionately impact minority or poor citizens. The ACLU believes that misdemeanor convictions should not lead to a loss of voting rights. The ACLU's Voting Rights Project leads this effort.
Women's rights – The ACLU works to eliminate discrimination against women in all realms. The ACLU encourages government to be proactive in stopping violence against women. These efforts are led by the ACLU's Women's Rights project.
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Support and opposition
The ACLU is supported by a variety of persons and organizations. There were over 1,000,000 members in 2017, and the ACLU annually receives thousands of grants from hundreds of charitable foundations. Allies of the ACLU in legal actions have included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Jewish Congress, People for the American Way, the National Rifle Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the National Organization for Women.
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The ACLU has been criticized by liberals such as when it excluded communists from its leadership ranks, when it defended Neo-Nazis, when it declined to defend Paul Robeson, or when it opposed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. Since the 1990s, the organization has come under heavy criticism from feminists for taking political positions that primarily serve corporate interests at the expense of women's civil rights. Conversely, it has been criticized by conservatives such as when it argued against official prayer in public schools, or when it opposed the Patriot Act. The ACLU has supported conservative figures such as Rush Limbaugh, George Wallace, Henry Ford and Oliver North as well as liberal figures such as Dick Gregory, Rockwell Kent and Benjamin Spock.
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A major source of criticism are legal cases in which the ACLU represents an individual or organization that promotes offensive or unpopular viewpoints such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, the Westboro Baptist Church or the Unite the Right rally. As of 2000, the ACLU has historically responded to this criticism by stating "[i]t is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive." Early years
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CLB era The ACLU developed from the National Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), co-founded in 1917 during World War I by Crystal Eastman, an attorney activist, and Roger Nash Baldwin. The focus of the CLB was on freedom of speech, primarily anti-war speech, and on supporting conscientious objectors who did not want to serve in World War I.
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Three United States Supreme Court decisions in 1919 each upheld convictions under laws against certain kinds of anti-war speech. In 1919, the Court upheld the conviction of Socialist Party leader Charles Schenck for publishing anti-war literature. In Debs v. United States, the court upheld the conviction of Eugene Debs. While the Court upheld a conviction a third time in Abrams v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote an important dissent which has gradually been absorbed as an American principle: he urged the court to treat freedom of speech as a fundamental right, which should rarely be restricted.
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In 1918, Crystal Eastman resigned from the organization due to health issues. After assuming sole leadership of the CLB, Baldwin insisted that the organization be reorganized. He wanted to change its focus from litigation to direct action and public education.
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The CLB directors concurred, and on January 19, 1920, they formed an organization under a new name, the American Civil Liberties Union. Although a handful of other organizations in the United States at that time focused on civil rights, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the ACLU was the first that did not represent a particular group of persons, or a single theme. Like the CLB, the NAACP pursued litigation to work on civil rights, including efforts to overturn the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South that had taken place since the turn of the century.
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During the first decades of the ACLU, Baldwin continued as its leader. His charisma and energy attracted many supporters to the ACLU board and leadership ranks. Baldwin was ascetic, wearing hand-me-down clothes, pinching pennies, and living on a very small salary. The ACLU was directed by an executive committee, and it was not particularly democratic or egalitarian. The ACLU's base in New York resulted in its being dominated by people from the city and state. Most ACLU funding came from philanthropies, such as the Garland Fund.
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Free speech era
In the 1920s, government censorship was commonplace. Magazines were routinely confiscated under the anti-obscenity Comstock laws; permits for labor rallies were often denied; and virtually all anti-war or anti-government literature was outlawed. Right-wing conservatives wielded vast amounts of power, and activists that promoted unionization, socialism, or government reform were often denounced as un-American or unpatriotic. In one typical instance in 1923, author Upton Sinclair was arrested for trying to read the First Amendment during an Industrial Workers of the World rally.
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ACLU leadership was divided on how to challenge the civil rights violations. One faction, including Baldwin, Arthur Garfield Hays and Norman Thomas, believed that direct, militant action was the best path. Hays was the first of many successful attorneys that relinquished their private practices to work for the ACLU. Another group, including Walter Nelles and Walter Pollak felt that lawsuits taken to the Supreme Court were the best way to achieve change.
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During the 1920s, the ACLU's primary focus was on freedom of speech in general, and speech within the labor movement particularly. Because most of the ACLU's efforts were associated with the labor movement, the ACLU itself came under heavy attack from conservative groups, such as the American Legion, the National Civic Federation, and Industrial Defense Association and the Allied Patriotic Societies.
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In addition to labor, the ACLU also led efforts in non-labor arenas, for example, promoting free speech in public schools. The ACLU itself was banned from speaking in New York public schools in 1921. The ACLU, working with the NAACP, also supported racial discrimination cases. The ACLU defended free speech regardless of the opinions being espoused. For example, the reactionary, anti-Catholic, anti-black Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a frequent target of ACLU efforts, but the ACLU defended the KKK's right to hold meetings in 1923. There were some civil rights that the ACLU did not make an effort to defend in the 1920s, including censorship of the arts, government search and seizure issues, right to privacy, or wiretapping.
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The Communist Party USA was routinely hounded by government officials, leading it to be the primary client of the ACLU. At the same time, the Communists were very aggressive in their tactics, often engaging in illegal conduct such as denying their party membership under oath. This led to frequent conflicts between the Communists and ACLU. Communist leaders sometimes attacked the ACLU, particularly when the ACLU defended the free speech rights of conservatives, whereas Communists tried to disrupt speeches by critics of the USSR. This uneasy relationship between the two groups continued for decades. Public schools
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Scopes trial
When 1925 arrived five years after the ACLU was formed the organization had virtually no success to show for its efforts. That changed in 1925, when the ACLU persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-evolution law in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Clarence Darrow, a member of the ACLU National Committee, headed Scopes' legal team. The prosecution, led by William Jennings Bryan, contended that the Bible should be interpreted literally in teaching creationism in school. The ACLU lost the case and Scopes was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the law but overturned the conviction on a technicality.
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The Scopes trial was a phenomenal public relations success for the ACLU. The ACLU became well known across America, and the case led to the first endorsement of the ACLU by a major US newspaper. The ACLU continued to fight for the separation of church and state in schoolrooms, decade after decade, including the 1982 case McLean v. Arkansas and the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
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Baldwin himself was involved in an important free speech victory of the 1920s, after he was arrested for attempting to speak at a rally of striking mill workers in New Jersey. Although the decision was limited to the state of New Jersey, the appeals court's judgement in 1928 declared that constitutional guarantees of free speech must be given "liberal and comprehensive construction", and it marked a major turning point in the civil rights movement, signaling the shift of judicial opinion in favor of civil rights.
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The most important ACLU case of the 1920s was Gitlow v. New York, in which Benjamin Gitlow was arrested for violating a state law against inciting anarchy and violence, when he distributed literature promoting communism. Although the Supreme Court did not overturn Gitlow's conviction, it adopted the ACLU's stance (later termed the incorporation doctrine) that the First Amendment freedom of speech applied to state laws, as well as federal laws. Pierce v. Society of Sisters
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After the First World War, many native-born Americans had a revival of concerns about assimilation of immigrants and worries about "foreign" values; they wanted public schools to teach children to be American. Numerous states drafted laws designed to use schools to promote a common American culture, and in 1922, the voters of Oregon passed the Oregon Compulsory Education Act. The law was primarily aimed at eliminating parochial schools, including Catholic schools. It was promoted by groups such as the Knights of Pythias, the Federation of Patriotic Societies, the Oregon Good Government League, the Orange Order, and the Ku Klux Klan.
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The Oregon Compulsory Education Act required almost all children in Oregon between eight and sixteen years of age to attend public school by 1926. Associate Director Roger Nash Baldwin, a personal friend of Luke E. Hart, the then–Supreme Advocate and future Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, offered to join forces with the Knights to challenge the law. The Knights of Columbus pledged an immediate $10,000 to fight the law and any additional funds necessary to defeat it.
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The case became known as Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a seminal United States Supreme Court decision that significantly expanded coverage of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. In a unanimous decision, the court held that the act was unconstitutional and that parents, not the state, had the authority to educate children as they thought best. It upheld the religious freedom of parents to educate their children in religious schools.
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Early strategy
Leaders of the ACLU were divided on the best tactics to use to promote civil liberties. Felix Frankfurter felt that legislation was the best long-term solution because the Supreme Court could not (and in his opinion should not) mandate liberal interpretations of the Bill of Rights. But Walter Pollak, Morris Ernst, and other leaders felt that Supreme Court decisions were the best path to guarantee civil liberties. A series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1920s foretold a changing national atmosphere; anti-radical emotions were diminishing, and there was a growing willingness to protect freedom of speech and assembly via court decisions. Free speech expansion
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Censorship was commonplace in the early 20th century. State laws and city ordinances routinely outlawed speech deemed to be obscene or offensive, and prohibited meetings or literature that promoted unions or labor organization. Starting in 1926, the ACLU began to expand its free speech activities to encompass censorship of art and literature. In that year, H. L. Mencken deliberately broke Boston law by distributing copies of his banned American Mercury magazine; the ACLU defended him and won an acquittal. The ACLU went on to win additional victories, including the landmark case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses in 1933, which reversed a ban by the Customs Department against the book Ulysses by James Joyce. The ACLU only achieved mixed results in the early years, and it was not until 1966 that the Supreme Court finally clarified the obscenity laws in the Roth v. United States and Memoirs v. Massachusetts cases.
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The Comstock laws banned distribution of sex education information, based on the premise that it was obscene and led to promiscuous behavior Mary Ware Dennett was fined $300 in 1928, for distributing a pamphlet containing sex education material. The ACLU, led by Morris Ernst, appealed her conviction and won a reversal, in which judge Learned Hand ruled that the pamphlet's main purpose was to "promote understanding".
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The success prompted the ACLU to broaden their freedom of speech efforts beyond labor and political speech, to encompass movies, press, radio and literature. The ACLU formed the National Committee on Freedom from Censorship in 1931 to coordinate this effort. By the early 1930s, censorship in the United States was diminishing.
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Two major victories in the 1930s cemented the ACLUs campaign to promote free speech. In Stromberg v. California, decided in 1931, the Supreme Court sided with the ACLU and affirmed the right of a communist party member to salute a communist flag. The result was the first time the Supreme Court used the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment to subject states to the requirements of the First Amendment. In Near v. Minnesota, also decided in 1931, the Supreme Court ruled that states may not exercise prior restraint and prevent a newspaper from publishing, simply because the newspaper had a reputation for being scandalous.
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1930s
The late 1930s saw the emergence of a new era of tolerance in the United States. National leaders hailed the Bill of Rights, particularly as it protected minorities, as the essence of democracy. The 1939 Supreme Court decision in Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization affirmed the right of communists to promote their cause. Even conservative elements, such as the American Bar Association began to campaign for civil liberties, which were long considered to be the domain of left-leaning organizations. By 1940, the ACLU had achieved many of the goals it set in the 1920s, and many of its policies were the law of the land.
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Expansion
In 1929, after the Scopes and Dennett victories, Baldwin perceived that there was vast, untapped support for civil liberties in the United States. Baldwin proposed an expansion program for the ACLU, focusing on police brutality, Native American rights, African American rights, censorship in the arts, and international civil liberties. The board of directors approved Baldwin's expansion plan, except for the international efforts.
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The ACLU played a major role in passing the 1932 Norris–La Guardia Act, a federal law which prohibited employers from preventing employees from joining unions, and stopped the practice of outlawing strikes, unions, and labor organizing activities with the use of injunctions. The ACLU also played a key role in initiating a nationwide effort to reduce misconduct (such as extracting false confessions) within police departments, by publishing the report Lawlessness in Law Enforcement in 1931, under the auspices of Herbert Hoover's Wickersham Commission. In 1934, the ACLU lobbied for the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, which restored some autonomy to Native American tribes, and established penalties for kidnapping Native American children.
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Although the ACLU deferred to the NAACP for litigation promoting civil liberties for African Americans, the ACLU did engage in educational efforts, and published Black Justice in 1931, a report which documented institutional racism throughout the South, including lack of voting rights, segregation, and discrimination in the justice system. Funded by the Garland Fund, the ACLU also participated in producing the influential Margold Report, which outlined a strategy to fight for civil rights for blacks. The ACLU's plan was to demonstrate that the "separate but equal" policies governing the Southern discrimination were illegal because blacks were never, in fact, treated equally.
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Depression era and the New Deal
In 1932twelve years after the ACLU was foundedit had achieved significant success; the Supreme Court had embraced the free speech principles espoused by the ACLU, and the general public was becoming more supportive of civil rights in general. But the Great Depression brought new assaults on civil liberties; the year 1930 saw a large increase in the number of free speech prosecutions, a doubling of the number of lynchings, and all meetings of unemployed persons were banned in Philadelphia.
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The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration proposed the New Deal to combat the depression. ACLU leaders were of mixed opinions about the New Deal, since many felt that it represented an increase in government intervention into personal affairs, and because the National Recovery Administration suspended antitrust legislation. Roosevelt was not personally interested in civil rights, but did appoint many civil libertarians to key positions, including Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, a member of the ACLU.
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The economic policies of the New Deal leaders were often aligned with ACLU goals, but social goals were not. In particular, movies were subject to a barrage of local ordinances banning screenings that were deemed immoral or obscene. Even public health films portraying pregnancy and birth were banned; as was Life magazine's April 11, 1938, issue which included photos of the birth process. The ACLU fought these bans, but did not prevail.
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The Catholic Church attained increasing political influence in the 1930s, and used its influence to promote censorship of movies, and to discourage publication of birth control information. This conflict between the ACLU and the Catholic Church led to the resignation of the last Catholic priest from ACLU leadership in 1934; a Catholic priest would not be represented there again until the 1970s.
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The ACLU took no official position on president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing plan, which threatened to increase the number of Supreme Court justices, unless the Supreme Court reversed its course and began approving New Deal legislation. The Supreme Court responded by making a major shift in policy, and no longer applied strict constitutional limits to government programs, and also began to take a more active role in protecting civil liberties.
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The first decision that marked the court's new direction was De Jonge v. Oregon, in which a communist labor organizer was arrested for calling a meeting to discuss unionization. The ACLU attorney Osmond Fraenkel, working with International Labor Defense, defended De Jonge in 1937, and won a major victory when the Supreme Court ruled that "peaceable assembly for lawful discussion cannot be made a crime." The De Jonge case marked the start of an era lasting for a dozen years, during which Roosevelt appointees (led by Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Frank Murphy) established a body of civil liberties law. In 1938, Justice Harlan F. Stone wrote the famous "footnote four" in United States v. Carolene Products Co. in which he suggested that state laws which impede civil liberties wouldhenceforthrequire compelling justification.
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Senator Robert F. Wagner proposed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, which empowered workers to unionize. Ironically, the ACLU, after 15 years of fighting for workers' rights, initially opposed the act (it later took no stand on the legislation) because some ACLU leaders feared the increased power the bill gave to the government. The newly formed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) posed a dilemma for the ACLU, because in 1937 it issued an order to Henry Ford, prohibiting Ford from disseminating anti-union literature. Part of the ACLU leadership habitually took the side of labor, and that faction supported the NLRB's action. But part of the ACLU supported Ford's right to free speech. ACLU leader Arthur Garfield Hays proposed a compromise (supporting the auto workers union, yet also endorsing Ford's right to express personal opinions), but the schism highlighted a deeper divide that would become more prominent in the years to come.
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The ACLU's support of the NLRB was a major development for the ACLU, because it marked the first time it accepted that a government agency could be responsible for upholding civil liberties. Until 1937, the ACLU felt that civil rights were best upheld by citizens and private organizations.
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Some factions in the ACLU proposed new directions for the organization. In the late 1930s, some local affiliates proposed shifting their emphasis from civil liberties appellate actions, to becoming a legal aid society, centered on store front offices in low income neighborhoods. The ACLU directors rejected that proposal. Other ACLU members wanted the ACLU to shift focus into the political arena, and to be more willing to compromise their ideals in order to strike deals with politicians. This initiative was also rejected by the ACLU leadership.
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