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Published at 5 Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy Journal 283 (2008)

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Article

Abstract

In the first part of the article it is pointed out that during the last two hundred years our government has frequently enacted measures that unfairly burden certain social groups during times of crisis. The historical analysis set forth in Part II of this article reveals that adoption of such measures is usually justified by an appeal to national security. Thus, we have been told that we need to exclude some groups from the full protection of our laws in order to guarantee the safety of the rest of the populace. The rest of the article is dedicated to explaining why I believe that this is a false dichotomy. There is no need to debate whether we should inequitably target certain groups of people as a way to maximize our security because there is no hard evidence tending to prove that doing so will really make us safer. Moreover, it seems that in light of the arguments advanced in Part IV of the article, there is reason to believe that adopting such laws will make us less safe.

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