The United States lost one third of its factory jobs in the past decade as jobs were outsourced offshore, mostly to Asia. Jobs that require a college degree are next to go. China will award six times as many degrees this year as they did ten years ago and any job that can be digitized will be 'tradable'. Estimates of the number of vulnerable jobs range from a low 11 million to a staggering 56 million 'middle class' jobs. The median United States household income has already dropped by seven percent since 2000 and without dramatic changes in the American workforce that trend will become a disaster for middle class Americans.

According to the Justice Department's National Crime Survey, the crime rate in the United States is lower today than it was when Nixon was in the White House. In spite of this, political leaders demand nationwide prison construction as a response to the war on drugs and to accommodate the results of the new three strikes law. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the needs of the non-disruptive poor are being ignored by the economic and political elites to the point of unprecedented homelessness. The author predicts this widening gap will prompt the return of 1960s-style civil turmoil which will lead to the end of the war on drugs and the emptying of hundreds of thousands of cells so the protesting poor can be plausibly threatened with incarceration.

The conscience of today's college students is guided by the personal moral values that underlie its concept of justice. College professors frequently avoid discussions of moral values, fearful of either the deconstructionist's criticism or the alleged wall of separation between church and state. Regardless of their reasons, they tend to argue that today's students have no interest in discussing abstract concepts of morality. The Daveys argue that given the right case studies of moral dilemmas, today's college students will enthusiastically share and discuss their own moral values, learn to critically examine pressing social issues, and grow to new levels of understanding.

More than two dozen scenarios involving moral questions concerning race, poverty, crime, drugs, sex, religion, educational funding, and constitutional rights are presented. These issues are faced by a generation raised during the information revolution. College students live in a world of such rapid change that nothing is certain about their future. It may well be that there has never been a time when college students were more eager to discuss fundamental questions about right and wrong, to examine their own moral values. This timely work is of value in any course touching upon moral values, including courses in sociology, education, political science and law, child development, criminal justice, and philosophy.

In the last two decades there has been an unprecedented increase in the use of imprisonment in the United States. This expansion of the imprisonment rate did not happen in the other Western democracies and, more importantly, it happened very unevenly among the fifty states. Professor Davey examines the change in the rate of imprisonment in relationship to the crime rate as well as six other socio-economic variables. Davey then examines a number of states in detail to assess the key factors that resulted in increased imprisonment. Professor Davey concludes from the analyses that "law and order" politics of individual governors was the pivotal factor in the decision to expand prisons. Expansion was neither an outgrowth of unusual crime increases nor an effective method of reducing further crime increases, but waging "war on crime" was a very effective method of winning elections.

The United States lost one third of its factory jobs in the past decade as jobs were outsourced offshore, mostly to Asia. Jobs that require a college degree are next to go. China will award six times as many degrees this year as they did ten years ago and any job that can be digitized will be 'tradable'. Estimates of the number of vulnerable jobs range from a low 11 million to a staggering 56 million 'middle class' jobs. The median United States household income has already dropped by seven percent since 2000 and without dramatic changes in the American workforce that trend will become a disaster for middle class Americans.

The conscience of today's college students is guided by the personal moral values that underlie its concept of justice. College professors frequently avoid discussions of moral values, fearful of either the deconstructionist's criticism or the alleged wall of separation between church and state. Regardless of their reasons, they tend to argue that today's students have no interest in discussing abstract concepts of morality. The Daveys argue that given the right case studies of moral dilemmas, today's college students will enthusiastically share and discuss their own moral values, learn to critically examine pressing social issues, and grow to new levels of understanding.

More than two dozen scenarios involving moral questions concerning race, poverty, crime, drugs, sex, religion, educational funding, and constitutional rights are presented. These issues are faced by a generation raised during the information revolution. College students live in a world of such rapid change that nothing is certain about their future. It may well be that there has never been a time when college students were more eager to discuss fundamental questions about right and wrong, to examine their own moral values. This timely work is of value in any course touching upon moral values, including courses in sociology, education, political science and law, child development, criminal justice, and philosophy.

According to the Justice Department's National Crime Survey, the crime rate in the United States is lower today than it was when Nixon was in the White House. In spite of this, political leaders demand nationwide prison construction as a response to the "war on drugs" and to accommodate the results of the new "three strikes" law. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the needs of the "non-disruptive poor" are being ignored by the economic and political elites to the point of unprecedented homelessness. The author predicts this widening gap will prompt the return of 1960s-style civil turmoil which will lead to the end of the "war on drugs" and the emptying of hundreds of thousands of cells so the protesting poor can be plausibly threatened with incarceration.

The proper role of the government operating in a free society and regulating an individual's behavior is a subject that can provoke heated political debate. There is an ongoing discussion among the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court about the fundamental values that are reflected in the words of the Bill of Rights. If we contrast the interpretation of the Bill of Rights presented by the Earl Warren Court four decades ago with the more recent decisions handed down by the Rehnquist and Roberts Court, we cannot avoid the conclusion that there has been a substantial change in the rights enjoyed by Americans. In referring to these changes, Justice Stephen Breyer recently wrote: "It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much." In The Bill of Rights Today, attorney and political scientist Joseph Dillon Davey examines the most controversial cases handed down by the Supreme Court and shows how the issues involved in these cases have profound implications for American society. Davey emphasizes the most controversial issues being faced by the High Court today and challenges our perspective on the role the Supreme Court Justice plays in determining the extent society will continue to enjoy the freedoms outlined in the U.S. Constitution.