A narrowly focused but eminently timely reproach to yet another Trumpian threat to the republic.
Constitutional lawyer Rips lays out a legal case for not admitting Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
The author, who served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, advances a technical argument that he asserts disqualifies Barrett from being named an associate justice: Her nomination is a violation of the religious test clause of the Constitution, the only clause, he adds, that by design cannot be amended. The violation lies less in Barrett’s belonging to an “insular, predominantly Catholic covenant community”—the tenets of which include overturning Roe v. Wade and infringing on LGBTQ+ rights, including the right of marriage—than it does in Trump’s turning the selection and vetting of the nominee over to a group of evangelicals. He did so, Rips asserts, to cement their support in the presidential election, since he had been losing support among fundamentalists, a strong component of his base. The religious test clause, controversial when added at the insistence of the Federalists, is specific. “The violation comes from allowing a particular religious group a dominant influence in determining who takes public office—it is the poisoned process, not its result, which constitutes the constitutional violation,” writes the author. Naturally enough, he suggests, Barrett does not accept the clause as written, though she has claimed to be guided by it and other precedents—though not the “superprecedent” of Roe. Rips calls for a lawsuit to be filed to enjoin Barrett from taking the bench until the religious test issue is resolved, adding that if the Republicans railroad her to the position, then she can be removed. “In that filing,” he holds, “it needs to be made evident that the courts will be defending the religion clauses of the Constitution but ultimately this democracy, this nation, from the interventions of a minority sect.”
A narrowly focused but eminently timely reproach to yet another Trumpian threat to the republic.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68219-405-8
Page Count: 104
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
