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GRAND INQUESTS

THE HISTORIC IMPEACHMENTS OF JUSTICE SAMUEL CHASE AND PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON

In a pleasant if unremarkable history lesson, America's Chief Justice (The Supreme Court, 1987) recounts ``two episodes in American history'' that were ``of extraordinary importance to the American system of government''—the impeachment trials of, in 1805, US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase and, in 1868, President Andrew Johnson. Rehnquist straightforwardly narrates the case of Chase, an ornery Federalist justice who was impeached by Jeffersonian Republicans for bias, intemperate pronouncements from the bench, and erroneous rulings in his conduct of criminal trials under the controversial Sedition Act—as well as that of Johnson, whom Radical Republicans impeached for dismissing Secretary of War Stanton in violation of the Tenure in Office Act. The author points out that both men were acquitted only because a number of senators defected from their party, and argues that the acquittals in these cases strengthened the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. In the case of Chase, Rehnquist asserts that ``the history of removals of federal judges by impeachment and conviction after the Chase acquittal...is testimony to the complete independence of federal judges from removal because of their judicial decisions.'' This is largely true, although Rehnquist fails to note the politically motivated efforts of the Nixon Administration to force liberal justices William O. Douglas and Abe Fortas from the Supreme Court. In the case of Johnson, Rehnquist correctly observes that, as a result of Johnson's acquittal, there has been only one serious attempt to impeach a president (Nixon), and that was based on criminal activity rather than disagreements on policy. The Chief Justice relates a great deal of American history, much of which, while interesting (and familiar), is tangential to his basic story. Not a seminal work of history, but a well-told and worthwhile look at two important incidents in the history of American government. (Eight pages of b&w photos—not seen.)

Pub Date: May 18, 1992

ISBN: 0-688-05142-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

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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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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