Peter H. Irons

Peter H. Irons
Occupation	Attorney Author Civil rights activist

Peter H. Irons (born 1940) is an American political activist, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and professor of political science. Irons is a graduate of Antioch College, an early incubator of progressive politics after World War II. He embarked on his current path in 1963 when he was issued a 3 year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut for refusing military induction. It was while serving his sentence that he became associated with another famous activist, Howard Zinn. He wrote to Zinn, who wrote back, sending him books on civil liberties and American politics. His conviction was ultimately reversed by a federal judge on the ground of prosecutorial misconduct. Later, President Gerald Ford granted him a pardon for refusing induction.

Irons went on to complete his doctorate at Boston University in 1973. Afterwards, Dr. Zinn helped arrange for Irons to work at a law firm defending Daniel Ellsberg, who was under federal prosecution at the time for stealing the Pentagon Papers. His work at the law firm would later serve as motivation for him to pursue a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Upon graduating, he taught at Boston College Law School and the University of Massachusetts before moving to the University of California at San Diego in 1982 where he would establish the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project, of which he is the director. In addition to teaching and authoring several books, he has also helped reopen the wartime internment cases of Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi.

He is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and an author on legal history. He retired from the University in 2004 and now devotes some of his time to causes that interest him. He has undertaken some legal work in issues of the separation of church and state and written some articles for the Montana Law Review.

Bibliography

Books

• Irons, Peter H. (1982). The New Deal lawyers. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04688-3. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1983). Justice at war. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503273-X. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1988). The courage of their convictions. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-02-915670-X. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1989). Justice delayed: the record of the Japanese American internment cases. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6175-4. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1991). Making Law: The Case for Judicial Activism. Free Press. ISBN 0029156718. 
• Stephanie Guitton; Irons, Peter H. (1993). May It Please the Court: 23 Live Recordings of Landmark Cases As Argued Before the Supreme Court, Including the Actual Voices of the Attorneys and J. New York: New Press. ISBN 1-56584-036-4. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1994). Brennan vs. Rehnquist: the battle for the Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ISBN 0-679-42436-9. 
• Irons, Peter H.; Stephanie Guitton (1995). May It Please the Court: Arguments on Abortion/Book and 2 Cassettes. New York: New Press. ISBN 1-56584-223-5. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1997). May It Please The Court: The First Amendment. Diane Pub Co. ISBN 0756776198. 
• Irons, Peter H. (1999). A People's History of the Supreme Court. New York, N.Y: Viking. ISBN 0-670-87006-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=bHqh7_LrLS8C&printsec=frontcover&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 

2000 Silver Gavel Award Honorable Mention

• Irons, Peter H. (2000). May it please the court: courts, kids, and the constitution. New York: New Press. ISBN 1-56584-613-3. 
• Irons, Peter H. (2002). Jim Crow's children: the broken promise of the Brown decision. New York, N.Y: Viking. ISBN 0-670-88918-0. 

2003 Silver Gavel Award Winner

• Irons, Peter H. (2004). Cases and Controversies : Civil Rights and Liberties in Context. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-045624-1. 
• Irons, Peter H. (2005). War powers: how the imperial presidency hijacked the Constitution. New York: Metropolitan Books. ISBN 0-8050-7593-3. 
• Irons, Peter H. (2007). God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields. Viking Adult. ISBN 0-670-03851-2. 

Video courses

• Irons, Peter; Finn, John E.. Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights & History of the Supreme Court. The Teaching Company. http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=8531&pc=Professor284. Retrieved 2007-10-11 
• Irons, Peter. History of the Supreme Court. The Teaching Company. http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=8570&pc=Professor284. Retrieved 2007-10-11 

Articles

• Irons, Peter (2007). "Disaster in Dover: The Trials (and Tribulations) of Intelligent Design". Montana Law Review 68 (1). http://www.umt.edu/mlr/Irons%20Response.pdf. Retrieved 2008-04-10 

References

• "Peter H. Irons". Department of Political Science, University of California at San Diego. Archived from the original on 2007-10-17. http://web.archive.org/web/20071017104619/http://polisci.ucsd.edu/faculty/irons.htm. Retrieved 2007-11-04. 
• "An Interview with Peter Irons" (pdf). 2003 Silver Gavel Awards for media and the arts. American Bar Association. 2003. Archived from the original on 2007-11-28. http://web.archive.org/web/20071128234557/http://www.abanet.org/publiced/gavel/gavel03.pdf. Retrieved 2007-11-04. 
• Gay Seidman (1975-12-12). "Out of Irons, Into the Dock". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=107769. Retrieved 2007-11-04. 
• Gay Seidman (1977-01-31). "Law Student Gets Presidential Pardon: Ford Clears Draft Resistor". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=151004. Retrieved 2007-11-04. 
• Bazelon, Emily (2005-08-21). "'War Powers': Original Intent". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/books/review/21BAZELON.html