The American criminal justice system is constantly faced with balancing rights of individual and the need for public order. While the criminal justice system must uphold the rights that we are granted it must also protect it’s citizens. This balancing act is represented by two opposing groups, individual-rights advocates and public-order advocates. Our text defines individual-rights advocates are “those who seek to protect the personal freedoms within the process of criminal justice”. It defines public-order advocates as “those who believe that under certain circumstances involving criminal threat to public safety, the interests of society should take precedence over individual rights” (Schmallenger 6). Many laws and regulations have been put into place to balance the two opposing groups throughout the history of American.

In the civil rights era, throughout 1960’s and 1970’s, led to the recognition of rights that had previously been denied due to certain groups. This movement would set new laws into motion that would grant certain rights to all American citizens regardless of gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity, or disabilities. The civil rights era also expanded to include rights of many other groups such as criminal suspects, parolees, probationers, trial participants, jail and prison inmates. Some of the numerous laws that were past during the civil rights era include the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which granted women the same wages as men and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which included the abloishment of the unequal application process for voter registration requirements, outlawed discrimination in public areas due to race in public areas, encouraged the desegregation of