Description: Citizenship as Foundation of Rights explores the nature and meaning of American citizenship and the rights flowing from citizenship in the context of current debates around politics, including immigration. The book explains the sources of citizenship rights in the Constitution and focuses on three key citizenship rights - the right to vote, the right to employment, and the right to travel in the US. It explains why those rights are fundamental and how national identification systems and ID requirements to vote, work and travel undermine the fundamental citizen rights. Richard Sobel analyzes how protecting citizens' rights preserves them for future generations of citizens and aspiring citizens here. No other book offers such a clarification of fundamental citizen rights and explains how ID schemes contradict and undermine the constitutional rights of American citizenship.
Brief description: Richard Sobel is a political scientist, and author and editor of eight books and numerous scholarly, law and policy articles. He graduated from Princeton University, New Jersey and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has taught at Princeton University, Smith College, Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, Harvard University, Massachusetts and Northwestern University, Illinois. At Harvard, he has also been a Research Associate of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, fellow of the Hutchins Center, Shorenstein Center, and Berkman Center, and member of the Program in Psychiatry and Law. He is Visiting Scholar at the Buffett Institute, Northwestern University, and director of Cyber Privacy Project. He has contributed to Supreme Court amicus briefs on voting rights and identification.
Review Quotes: 'The book ... gives a concise and yet comprehensive overview of the basic rights that American citizenship provides, the basic concepts that have been incorporated into law in structuring American citizenship over time, and particularly today. So anyone looking for a clear and concise understanding of how American citizenship has been, or is currently legally constructed will find this book of great value. Another of the valuable things that [this relatively brief and therefore accessible] book does is, in mapping out rights of citizenship, [is] focusing primarily ... on right to vote, right to travel, and right to work. There's more in the book, but even bringing these three together is a valuable ... contribution since they're not all discussed as fundamental pillars of citizenship in many works. In particular, the right to travel is one that tends to have been treated as more marginal than it should have been, given its centrality in civil rights struggles in this country in particular periods, as Richard brings out.' Rogers Smith, 'Author Meets Critics', Midwest Political Science Association