Has legislation over-reached itself? The contributors to this volume discuss whether the increase in legislative instruments of many kinds, often promoted with good intentions, may be progressively limiting both our individual and our communal freedoms. Contributors include Bernard Crick, Maurice Peston and James Ferman discuss this key idea in accessible and forthright style.

Preface (Richard Hoggart) Part 1: Screwing Us into Virue 1. Can We Legislate Against Discrimination? (Bernard Crick) Part 2: Hardy Perennials 2. The Right to Protest (John Alderson) 3. Obscenity: Manners and Morals in the Media (James Ferman) 4. The Mentally Ill and the Power of the State (Larry Gostin) Part 3: New Possibilities, New Threats 5. Computers and Privace (Norman Lindop) 6. Interventive Reproduction (Ursula Mittwoch) 7. Economics of Freedom (Maurice Peston) Part 4: So Should We Have Written Constitutional Protection? 8. A Bill of Rights for the United Kingdom? (Nicola Lacey) Part 5: International Perspectives 9. Freedom and "Balance": the Global Media Controversy (Rosemary Righter) 10. Freedom and the Breakdown of International Order (Pierre de Senarclens) Part 6: The Future of the Progressive Consensus 11. Freedom, Liberalism and Subversion (Keith Graham)