This book is a history of the civil liberties records of American presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama. It examines the full range of civil liberties issues: First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, press and assembly; due process; equal protection, including racial justice, women's rights, and lesbian and gay rights; privacy rights, including reproductive freedom; and national security issues. The book argues that presidents have not protected or advanced civil liberties, and that several have perpetrated some of the worst violations. Some Democratic presidents (Wilson and Roosevelt), moreover, have violated civil liberties as badly as some Republican presidents (Nixon and Bush). This is the first book to examine the full civil liberties records of each president (thus, placing a president's record on civil rights with his record on national security issues), and also to compare the performance on particular issues of all the presidents covered.

‘Sam Walker, one of the nation's most important historians of civil liberties, offers a magisterial and nuanced overview of the troubled relationships between presidents and civil liberties from Wilson to Obama. This invaluable guide makes clear that no matter what party holds executive office, civil libertarians must look beyond the President for protection of, much less progress on, civil liberties.'

David Cole - Georgetown University Law Center

‘… [an] exciting, important book … It is an engaging, fascinating, eye-opening, impressively researched and thoughtful discussion of such a vital topic. To the credit of the author, the book is scrupulously fair and non-partisan, taking special pains to dispel stereotypes, shibboleths and oversimplifications about particular presidents and political parties. The initial exploration of the Obama Administration's record, putting it into the overall historical context, is very important - critical but fair.'

Nadine Strossen - New York Law School and former President, American Civil Liberties Union (1991–2008)