scholarly journals Brief Amici Curiae of Experts in the History of Executive Surveillance: James Bamford, Loch Johnson, and Peter Fenn in First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. National Security Agency

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Urban

*Abstract: *This case presents pressing questions regarding the executive's power to collect, store, and use Americans' telephony and other personal data for the purposes of conducting surveillance operations.In the wake of recent disclosures revealing National Security Agency data collection programs, the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles and 21 other membership and political advocacy organizations filed this lawsuit to challenge the NSA's collection of telephony data as an infringement of their members' First and Fourth Amendment rights.In this amicus brief, experts in the history of American surveillance -- James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace; Peter Fenn, who served as Washington Chief of Staff for Senator Frank Church and as a staff member to the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Dr. Loch Johnson, who served as special assistant to the Church Committee chair and as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight -- explain the historical parallels between the executive surveillance programs that are presently coming to light and the development of abusive surveillance practices from the 1940s to the 1970s.All amici were directly involved in the comprehensive review of twentieth-century American intelligence operations completed by the Church Committee in the 1970s, giving them a uniquely thorough understanding of these parallels.Drawing from the experts’ extensive knowledge, the brief explains the clear parallels between the development and growth of the abusive practices of the mid-twentieth century -- when American intelligence agencies helped conduct politically motivated surveillance of Americans ranging from ordinary teachers, journalists and peace activists to civil rights leaders, members of Congress, and a Supreme Court justice -- and today’s vast surveillance programs. History shows that abusive surveillance does not require bad actors to grow and flourish: instead, it is the natural outgrowth of too much secrecy and too little oversight by other branches of government.In light of this clear historical pattern, the brief argues that the court should carefully apply existing legal limits on the government’s surveillance powers to address the risks posed by the executive branch and the intelligence agencies’ claims to expansive power to determine the limits of their own activities.Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2353719

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Ramirez

Throughout the twentieth century (and now the twenty-first), the specter of a Latina/o past, present, and future has haunted the myth of Los Angeles as a sunny, bucolic paradise. At the same time it has loomed behind narratives of the city as a dystopic, urban nightmare. In the 1940s Carey McWilliams pointed to the fabrication of a “Spanish fantasy heritage” that made Los Angeles the bygone home of fair señoritas, genteel caballeros and benevolent mission padres. Meanwhile, the dominant Angeleno press invented a “zoot” (read Mexican-American) crime wave. Unlike the aristocratic, European Californias/os of lore, the Mexican/American “gangsters” of the 1940s were described as racial mongrels. What's more, the newspapers explicitly identified them as the sons and daughters of immigrants-thus eliding any link they may have had to the Californias/os of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or to the history of Los Angeles in general.


Author(s):  
David Luscombe

This chapter discusses the contributions that were made by former Fellows of the Academy to the study of the medieval church. It states that the history of the medieval church is inseparable from the general history of the Middle Ages, since the church shaped society and society shaped the church. The chapter determines that no hard and fast distinction can always be made between the works by ecclesiastical historians during the twentieth century, and the contributions made to general history by other historians.


Author(s):  
Ruth Coates

Chapter 2 sets out the history of the reception of deification in Russia in the long nineteenth century, drawing attention to the breadth and diversity of the theme’s manifestation, and pointing to the connections with inter-revolutionary religious thought. It examines how deification is understood variously in the spheres of monasticism, Orthodox institutions of higher education, and political culture. It identifies the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky and the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev as the most influential elite cultural expressions of the idea of deification, and the primary conduits through which Western European philosophical expressions of deification reach early twentieth-century Russian religious thought. Inspired by the anthropotheism of Feuerbach, and Stirner’s response to this, Dostoevsky brings to the fore the problem of illegitimate self-apotheosis, whilst Soloviev, in his philosophy of divine humanity, bequeaths deification to his successors both as this is understood by the church and in its iteration in German metaphysical idealism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 240-258
Author(s):  
Mary E. Sommar

This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others’ behavior toward such slaves. Chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods, along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided, and there is a short Latin lexicon. This chapter summarizes the conclusions drawn in earlier chapters and provides a brief overview of the question of ecclesiastical servitude up to the twentieth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 434-454
Author(s):  
Dan D. Cruickshank

This article uses the history of the Ornaments Rubric in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to explore the emergence of claims to self-governance within the Church of England in this period and the attempts by parliament to examine how independent the legal system of the church was from the secular state. First, it gives an overview of the history of the Ornaments Rubric in the various editions of the Book of Common Prayer and the Acts of Uniformity, presenting the legal uncertainty left by centuries of Prayer Book revision. It then explores how the Royal Commission into Ritualism (1867–70) and the Public Worship Regulation Act (1874) attempted to control Ritualist interpretations of the Ornaments Rubric through secular courts. Examining the failure of these attempts, it looks towards the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1904–6). Through the evidence given to the commission, it shows how the previous royal commission and the work of parliament and the courts had failed to stop the continuation of Ritualist belief in the church's independence from secular courts. Using the report of the royal commission, it shows how the commissioners attempted to build a via media between strict spiritual independence and complete parliamentary oversight.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-333
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kangwa

The history of Christianity in Africa contains selected information reflecting patriarchal preoccupations. Historians have often downplayed the contributions of significant women, both European and indigenous African. The names of some significant women are given without details of their contribution to the growth of Christianity in Africa. This article considers the contributions of Peggy Hiscock to the growth of Christianity in Zambia. Hiscock was a White missionary who was sent to serve in Zambia by the Methodist Church in Britain. She was the first woman to have been ordained in the United Church of Zambia. Hiscock established the Order of Diaconal Ministry and founded a school for the training of deaconesses in the United Church of Zambia. This article argues that although the nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionary movement in Africa is associated with patriarchy and European imperialism, there were European women missionaries who resisted imperialism and patriarchy both in the Church and society.


Book Review: The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro, Transport of Delight: The Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles, Rêves parisiens: L'échec de projets de transport public en France au XIXe siècle, Histoire des chemins de fer en France (History of railways in France) II, Le ferrovie in viaggio verso l'Europa: La liberalizzazione delle ferrovie (The railways in travel vis-à-Vis Europe: The liberalisation of the railways), Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of two unique Men, a Legendary Company and a remarkable Time in American History, Rozwoj koncepcji samochodu osobowego w XX wieku (The evolution of the car in the twentieth century), Das zweite Jahrhundert des Automobils. Technische Innovationen, ökonomische Dynamik und kulturelle Aspekte (The second century of the automobile: Technical innovations, economic dynamics and cultural aspects), Motorcycle, Transportgeschichte im internationalen Vergleich. Europa—China—Naher Osten (International comparison of transport history: Europe—China—Near East), Inventare gli spostamenti: Storia e immagini dell'autostrada Torino—Savona (Inventing movement: History and images of the A6 motorway), Reti mobilità, trasporti: Il sistema italiano tra prospettiva storica e innovazione (Networks of mobility and transport: The Italian system in the perspective of historical and innovation sciences), ‘Votes Count but the Number of Seats decides: A Comparative Historical Case Study of Twentieth Century Danish, Swedish and Norwegian Road Policy’, Εττόμενή στάσή: Χαμένες λεωφόροι. Μια περιδιάβασή στήν κοσμογονία τής αμερικανικής кал τής ευρωπαϊκής μήτρόπολής, Blind Landings: Low-visibility Operations in American Aviation, 1918–1958, Dictatorship of the Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia, The Rescue of the Third Class on the Titanic: A Revisionist History, Verkehr. Zu einer poetischen Theorie der Moderne (Traffic: Towards a poetic theory of modern times), Gebuchte Gefühle. Tourismus zwischen Verortung und Entgrenzung (Booked feelings: Tourism from localisation to boundlessness)

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 326-353
Author(s):  
Jan Oliva ◽  
Stefano Maggi ◽  
Bob Post ◽  
Zachary M. Schrag ◽  
Sabine Barles ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-409
Author(s):  
JAKE JOHNSON

AbstractFor over ten years, Los Angeles arts patron Betty Freeman (1921–2009) welcomed composers, performers, scholars, patrons, and invited guests into her home for a series of monthly musicales that were known as ‘Salotto’. In this article, I analyse Freeman's musicales within a sociological framework of gender and what Randall Collins calls ‘interaction rituals’. I contextualize these events, which took place in a space in her Beverly Hills home known as the Music Room, within a broader history of salon culture in Los Angeles in the twentieth century – a history that shaped the city's relationship with the artistic avant-garde and made Los Angeles an important amplifier for many of the most important voices in contemporary Western art music of the last sixty years.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document