Wellesley teen publishes book in defense of civil liberties

As if it wasn’t impressive enough that Wellesley’s Andrew Courey published a book called “Early Bird Gets The Bitcoin” as an 11-year-old in 2018, he’s back this year with a second book called “How Liberty Lives: Protecting Civil Liberties for the Next 250 Years.”

Courey—19 now, 18 when he wrote the book—attends Tremont School in Concord and not surprisingly has plans to study political science/government in college. He was supported throughout his latest book writing process by his family, including sister Alexa, who did the cover art.

The official description for “How Liberty Lives” explains that it was “ written in defense of civil liberties and in honor of the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.” It’s a narrated collection of 250 new and old quotes about civil liberties and democracy.

After reading the book’s intro, I shot Courey a handful of questions by email. Here’s our exchange:

What prompted you to write this?

I have spent a lot of time on my own studying power and law. An area of particular interest to me is authoritarian regimes and how they operate. An important question for me is why are places oppressive. What I found was that in democracies it wasn’t because constitutions weren’t good enough or that a corrupt elite was keeping power through violence, it was because the people wanted what they wanted more than freedom. No amount of laws, norms, or Constitutional rights can make a free country out of a people that do not believe in liberty. Senator Padmé Amidala’s quote in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, “So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause,” describes my view. I wrote “How Liberty Lives” because I believe that if liberty can die by thunderous applause it can live by it too. Through educating the people about the importance of liberty generally and of the specific elements that is requires (freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, an independent judiciary, separation of powers and checks and balances, limited government, and many more) I believe I can spread my love of freedom and teach the rulers of our republic (the people) how to keep and expand it.

How did your ideas for the book evolve?

My initial idea for the book was 1776 quotes on freedom in the mid fall, that became 250 quotes for the 250th Anniversary of the United States. Eventually the book expanded to include narration on the quotes, then chapter essays, a Recipe for Liberty, and a very lengthy introduction about vague laws, an overly harsh criminal justice system, low civic education, and mass surveillance. Separately I wanted to write a book on vague laws, but quickly realized I lacked the legal expertise and time to do so. I then separately drafted some proposed constitutional amendments instead to send to the government. Near the end of writing my book I combined these to create my list of proposed Constitutional Amendments in an open letter to state legislatures.

Is the premise here that we’ve been making decent progress on civil liberties over the past 250 years, but that a confluence of things now could threaten that progress?

I truly believe our country will be free in the future. From the birth of our nation until now, we have seen Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s dream of freedom be transformed into reality. The spirit of the Founding Fathers was right, but it has taken the whole of our history for it to come close to being realized. What concerns me today is that most people have no memory of the time in our history when the freedoms we take for granted today (voting rights, anti-discrimination laws, freedom of speech, privacy rights, and so many more) were far weaker. Every loss of freedom comes with some expected gain in security, wealth, justice, or other positive things. When the people forget the danger and immense harm that comes at the cost of authoritarian policies, it becomes far easier for those who wish to increase their power at the expense of our freedom to do so.

Tech-enabled mass surveillance: Are we mainly talking about artificial general intelligence here, or something broader?

Surveillance has always existed. In Ancient Times, government informants with no technology were capable of monitoring and reporting on dissent. But without any technology however, they could not truly keep an eye on everyone. Since digital recording technology became available, governments gained the capacity to monitor everything. But without incredible numbers of people to listen to and interpret the data, governments can’t actually surveil everything. Only now, with AI can every call be listened to, interpreted, cross analyzed with other surveillance data from billions of people, and relayed to enforcers with near real time and a very low cost. AI still isn’t that smart, so humans are still very needed for these programs. When AI becomes as capable as humans and compute power becomes cheaper with quantum computers, the dream of all autocrats since the beginning of time to monitor and punish all dissent will be possible.

I’m not sure most people think much about the vagueness of our laws. What are the chief threats here to different classes of people?

Vague laws violate the fundamental principle of justice that no person should be punished without having fair notice of what is subject to punishment. Laws are so unclear that even Supreme Court justices who are highly educated lawyers with years of experience can’t even agree on

what they mean. How is it fair to expect ordinary people to stake their freedom on a guess about what a court will rule a law means? From my book: “The current Constitutional standard the courts have adopted to define a vague law is ‘a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application’ (Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 1926). This standard is insufficient and is only applied to incredibly vague laws. The danger of these laws is that they leave ordinary citizens at the mercy of the government as they will accidentally break laws because they don’t understand them and can be punished if the government turns against them. This threatens democracy as the government can target political activists for accidental violations to retaliate against them. In addition, they chill lawful conduct because careful people not knowing whether their activities are legal may avoid them despite having a Constitutional right to them. My proposed 28th Amendment would resolve this.

Many are aware of the unfairness of the criminal justice system (say on how drug laws have been enforced). But in what ways is the criminal justice system overly harsh?

The criminal justice system is overly harsh in many ways. The first is in excessive sentencing, specifically three strikes laws which allow for the imposition of a life sentence without parole for people who commit three crimes (different states and the federal government decide which crimes qualify differently) that otherwise may have only landed them with probation. Removing the sentencing discretion from judges and punishing someone who mugged someone with a knife twice and sold prescription drugs illegally the same as a mass murderer is wrong. Second, the death penalty is excessive and should be abolished. Not only is it bad policy because innocent people get executed and killers go free, but it is torture to make people wait helplessly in a death chamber for years to be killed. Third, the conditions of prisons are appalling. Widespread sexual violence, lack of proper nutrition, dehumanization, being housed away from families purposely, high temperatures, lack of sanitation, and guard abuse make prison in America torturous. Like the death penalty, it isn’t just cruel, but harms the goal of protecting the public. People who leave prison often re-offend. Sure, some are just evil, but many are unable to get on their feet after leaving prison due to lack of education, trauma from their time in prison, mental health issues, and the stigma of being an ex-con and resort to crime to survive. The death penalty, mandatory minimums, and abusive prison conditions must be prohibited. Prisons should work to correct inmates through mental health support, proper nutrition, education, and job training so that after they leave, they can make society better, not keep committing crimes.

What do you think is behind low civic awareness? Let’s focus this locally for our purposes. We see, for example, low voter turnouts locally unless there’s some really hot issue on the ballot.

Civic awareness has three basic levels in my view (full-time Constitutional scholars are beyond these). The first is the easiest, which is actual basic knowledge such as what the issues on ballot questions are, who the candidates are, that not every statement is to be trusted, and that people have rights that the government can’t violate. This is not the biggest issue as most people have some general sense of these things. The second level is understanding what is in the Constitution and the basic principles on which it is built, the essential rights we have, the branches of government, the danger of violating the Constitution, and a bit about specific issues like surveillance or criminal justice. This area is weak. The third level is where people have read the Constitution, read some court cases, know about the thinking and applications of most parts of the Constitution, know a lot about a variety of political issues, and are able to understand how authoritarians win and how to exercise their lawful rights to prevent that. At a basic level, students need to be actually taught these things. Schools often gloss over them and provide merely a superficial understanding. Schools should make sure all students not only have to learn these things, but understand them and why they matter. The core issue however is that it is really hard to go beyond a surface level understanding. People who aren’t interested in civics won’t really know more than the basics. Those who are, but are taught in a way that they can’t understand or which puts so much emphasis on memorization and not on understanding won’t either. It is the job of schools to get people interested so they can have the motivation to do the hard work of learning about their role as keepers of the republic and to help people understand just how bad life is in dictatorships and the importance of keeping and expanding freedom here.

Local officials are trying to figure out more effective ways to communicate. Do you have any thoughts on this issue?

People have busy lives and the best way to really get them engaged is to combine one of their interests with a political event so they don’t lose time doing other things at a political event. A cooking class with a town rep where people can take home the food, a party on the town green to celebrate something where people can hang out with their friends and talk with their elected officials, a trivia night with the local school to learn about Town issues, and similar fun outings can be good. What I see today is a national loneliness created and exacerbated by social media and see value in political leaders actually talking to constituents in person in an informal and comfortable setting.

You propose additional amendments to the Constitution. It’s been a while (1992?). What do you think the chances are of new amendments coming our way in the near term?

I don’t expect any amendment to be adopted soon due to political division. Every amendment I propose makes the government’s life far more difficult. Vague laws allow them to punish people more easily. Overbroad laws allow political leaders to chill conduct that they can’t prohibit (it takes years and sometimes decades of litigation to clarify which parts of overbroad laws are unconstitutional). Harsh punishments (executions, mandatory minimums, solitary confinement and other excessive punishments) deter people from violating their rules better than compassion. Penal labor brings in money for the government to spend on programs to win votes. Expanding freedom of speech and of the press would have some very bad consequences in terms of exposing embarrassing government activities. Abolishing defamation laws as applied to public officials would open them up to even more criticism. The government is extremely unlikely to champion my reforms; only the overwhelming demands of the people will get new amendments of a consequential and libertarian nature passed.

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