Sensible arguments opposing what seems like the wave of the future.
A legal expert examines “a dangerous approach to constitutional law that would jeopardize many basic rights and advances in equality.”
In his latest, Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law School, delivers a lucid, convincing attack on a prominent legal philosophy, though he admits that it is unlikely to change its adherents’ minds. The author writes that the Constitution is an impressive document written by brilliant men who considered it a framework that defined the responsibilities and limitations of government. For nearly two centuries, judges interpreted it broadly to deal with issues in an ever changing world. Matters changed after World War II when the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions that infuriated conservatives, certain they were based on the judges’ personal (and liberal) values. At only four pages, the Constitution seems limited, but scholars maintained that intense study would reveal the Founders’ true intentions. Proponents of originalism postulated that those intentions, plus their beliefs at the time they wrote the document (and of those who wrote amendments), must serve as the sole determining factors for a legal decision. Chemerinsky maintains that this makes no sense. Madison and Hamilton violently disagreed on major constitutional issues of executive power and of Congress’ spending power. Who was right? The 14th Amendment, which guarantees “equal protection,” has long been taken literally, but the intent of the framers in 1868 was to protect freed slaves. Therefore, originalists insist, it does not forbid discrimination against women, racial minorities, the disabled, or gay citizens. They maintain that there is no constitutional right to privacy because the Constitution doesn’t mention it. In a disheartening look toward the future, Chemerinsky warns that the Supreme Court, now solidly originalist, will radically transform our nation in the decades to come. Roe v. Wade has been overturned already, and the author also explores rulings that restrict environmental protection and immigration and expand the right to carry guns.
Sensible arguments opposing what seems like the wave of the future.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-300-25990-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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