Right-Wing Group Offers Free Legal Defense to Protect Constitutional Rights
The American Liberty League (often referred to simply as the Liberty League), a right-wing group primarily devoted to attacking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, on this day offered to provide free legal defense to anyone who felt his or her constitutional rights were violated by the New Deal and was unable to afford a lawyer.
League spokesperson James M. Beck, a former member of Congress, declared in a radio address that the New Deal was “insidiously undermining the very foundations of the Constitution.” The conservative interpretation of constitutional rights, however, largely confined itself to economic rights, particularly freedom of contract, and not the issues in the Bill of Rights, particularly freedom of speech and press and religious liberty (1st Amendment) =, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures (4th Amendment), equal protection of the law (the 14th Amendment), protection against cruel and unusual punishment (8th Amendment)
A free speech issue that particularly alarmed the American Liberty League was the new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), established by the 1935 Wagner Act, and any rulings that might hold anti-union statements or publications as unfair labor practices.
There is no record of the Liberty League undertaking a broad defense of constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and press that comprise today’s civil liberties agenda. The League was formed in 1934, and enjoyed its heyday in the mid to late-1930s. After President Roosevelt’s landslide re-election victory in 1936, the League greatly reduced its activities, and it disbanded in 1940.
A new right-wing, racist and anti-semitic group called the Liberty Lobby was formed in 1958, but collapsed and died around 2001.
Learn more about the Liberty League: George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1934-1940 (1962)
Read about the political and intellectual connections between the American Liberty League of the 1930s and the Tea Party Movement of 2009 and beyond