Recommended particularly for attorneys and other legal professionals who can appreciate, analyze, and critique the author's...
An influential legal commentator grapples with the jurisprudential legacy of Antonin Scalia (1936-2016).
During his lengthy tenure on the Supreme Court, Scalia promoted two approaches to interpreting statutes and the Constitution, textualism and originalism, with the aim of limiting what he saw as unprincipled judicial activism through the use of more objective analytical methods. Hasen (Law and Political Science/Univ. of California, Irvine; Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, 2016, etc.) argues that while Scalia was very successful in promoting both approaches in courts and law schools, neither provide the benefits Scalia claimed for them and Scalia himself was inconsistent in their use. "Scalia tried to have it both ways,” writes the author, “by describing himself as bound by strong neutral principles, and then bending those principles to adhere to other principles, such as ideology or respect for precedent." Hasen effectively supports his critique with incisive analysis of pertinent cases and legal commentary, clearly explaining the fundamental theoretical and practical weaknesses of these methodologies. While Scalia could be charming in person, his legal writing was notorious for an overbearing and sarcastic attitude, especially in dissent. His slashing prose style certainly called attention to his views, but Hasen contends that by attacking other justices personally and questioning their intelligence and motivations, he contributed to a coarsening of legal discourse and unnecessarily "took aim at the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's decisionmaking," all to the court's detriment. In later chapters, the author addresses Scalia's approach to cases involving such politically controversial topics as affirmative action and campaign financing, and here his arguments are on shakier ground. Hasen seems to disapprove of the jurisprudence of this conservative justice on largely ideological grounds, and his discussion of these topics frequently swerves from careful analysis to partisan advocacy.
Recommended particularly for attorneys and other legal professionals who can appreciate, analyze, and critique the author's viewpoint for themselves.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-300-22864-9
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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