With clear-minded authority, Banner tells the story of a crucial, but misunderstood, part of the constitutional structure.
The fiery language directed at SCOTUS obscures a fascinating, complex story, says this engaging book.
The past decade has seen waves of vitriol directed at the Supreme Court from one side or another, so it is refreshing to find a book that sets out the institution’s history without histrionics. Banner is a distinguished legal academic who has written a series of interesting books, including How the Indians Lost Their Land, The Death Penalty, and The Decline of Natural Law, and his intention here is to explain how the Court has operated since its founding. A point that is often missed is that the Court focuses on appeals, judicial review, and technical issues of law. It can, if it chooses, hear cases where the facts are in dispute, but those are unusual. It is often seen as leaning toward the conservative side of the spectrum, but in the 1960s and 1970s it was certainly of a liberal bent. Critics often claimed, then, that in decisions like Miranda, Brown, and Roe, it was ignoring public opinion, going beyond its constitutional role, and creating disruption. When the Court became more conservative, its previous supporters and opponents switched sides and arguments, apparently without a hint of irony. Banner lays out the reasoning in recent cases like Dobbs but is scrupulously evenhanded, offering no opinion about the legal merits of either the decision or the dissent. He notes that calls for changing the Court to affect decisions, such as by increasing the number of judges, are not new but have never received much support. For its part, the Court often shows a surprising independent streak. Banner avoids jargon wherever possible, and the result is a book that is accessible, intelligent, and colorful.
With clear-minded authority, Banner tells the story of a crucial, but misunderstood, part of the constitutional structure.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2024
ISBN: 9780197780350
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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