Table of Contents

Introduction
1. From the Soapbox to the Courthouse
2. The Vagrancy Law Education of Ernest Besig
3. "Shuffling" Sam Thompson and the Liberty End Café
4. "For Integration? You're a Vagrant"
5. "Morals Are Flexible from One Generation . . . to Another"
6. "The Most Significant Criminal Case of the Year"
7. Hippies, Hippie Lawyers, and the Challenge of Nonconformity
8. The Beginning of the End of Vagrancy Laws
9. "Vagrancy Is No Crime"
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

About the Author

Risa Goluboff is the Dean of the University of Virginia School of Law and the Arnold H. Leon Professor of Law. She is also the author of The Lost Promise of Civil Rights.

Reviews

"With limpid and stylish prose and an eye for illustrative detail, Goluboff traces how the 'vagrancy law regime' came to be challenged and ultimately eliminated...[T]his compelling history, with its strong narrative flow, ranges widely beyond the chambers of the Supreme Court, offering a social history of legal change...Vagrant Nation is a necessary contribution to the history of police and social movements in the postwar United States..."--Stuart
Schrader, The Journal of Southern History
"Vagrant Nation is an extraordinary accomplishment, one of the best books of constitutional history ever written. Using vagrancy law as her launching pad, Goluboff ties together and sheds light upon all of the major social reform movements of the 1960s and the constitutional law that arose around them-civil rights, gay rights, criminal procedure rights, the free speech rights of communists and Vietnam War protestors, the expressive rights of hippies
and beatniks, and the sexual revolution. In the process, Goluboff teaches us how constitutional law gets made."--Michael J. Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Harvard Law School
"Vagrant Nation is a fascinating account of how constitutional change occurs when old laws and new social understandings collide."--Linda Greenhouse, Lecturer, Yale Law School
"Vagrant Nation tells how police used vagrancy laws as all-purpose weapons to stifle the movements defining the Sixties, and how a movement of movements persuaded the Supreme Court to eradicate those laws and ban jailing people simply because they were different--black, poor, gay, hippie, or antiwar. It's a brilliant account of how a forgotten campaign to reform the law made America a more tolerant and much better country."--Lincoln Caplan, Truman
Capote Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
"A masterful exploration of constitutional change! Goluboff presents a fascinating account of how dragnet criminal laws, once considered desirable protection against undesirables, clashed with emerging visions of a more inclusive society."--Susan Herman, President, American Civil Liberties Union
"Goluboff offers a genuinely original take on the civil rights revolution--and one of enduring relevance in this era of high tension between the police and minorities."--Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University
"Goluboff delivers an intelligently articulated, well-researched explication of vagrancy laws, including how new interpretations helped transform American society during the 1960s."--CHOICE