A solid argument for judicial reform—and if not that, bypassing the Supreme Court whenever possible.
The insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, may have been the work of a mob, but robed judges stood behind it.
According to Douglas, a law professor and author of Vote for US, the Supreme Court’s decisions over the past decade have “contributed to the rise of anti-democracy forces animating our elections.” Some rulings support gerrymandered legislative districts; some defer election standards to state officials whose interest it is to keep those in power there; and some simply erode laws protecting voting rights. “It rules in incremental ways,” writes the author, “chopping away a little here, a little there.” The result is a constitutional guarantee undermined to the point of meaninglessness. When Georgia voters turned out in the 2021 runoff elections and put two Democrats in the Senate, the Republican legislature responded by slashing the number of ballot drop boxes placed in mostly Black precincts, a blatant exercise in voter suppression. Blandly stating that it’s up to the states to decide, the Court has disenfranchised millions of voters. This began longer than a decade ago, of course; Douglas repeatedly circles back to Bush v. Gore and the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court held that a “recount would take too long,” placing the whim of the legislature over the will of the voters. “Essentially,” he adds, “the court’s approach means that state legislatures should have little oversight from the courts, regardless of whether it’s before or after an election.” The Court may have rebuffed many of Trump’s falsely premised lawsuits, but that’s no guarantee that it will intervene judicially the next time a state decides to float a slate of false electors—a scary thought that’s entirely in keeping with many of the Court’s recent decisions.
A solid argument for judicial reform—and if not that, bypassing the Supreme Court whenever possible.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780807010938
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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