Civil Rights Books

The Invisible Constitution (Inalienable Rights)

Laurence H. Tribe

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

As everyone knows, the United States Constitution is a tangible, visible document. Many see it in fact as a sacred text, holding no meaning other than that which is clearly visible on the page. Yet as renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe shows, what is not written in the Constitution plays a key role in its interpretation. Indeed some of the most contentious Constitutional debates of our time hinge on the extent to which it can admit of divergent readings.
In The Invisible Constitution, Tribe argues that there is an unseen constitution--impalpable but powerful--that accompanies the parchment version. It is the visible document's shadow, its dark matter: always there and possessing some of its key meanings and values despite its absence on the page. As Tribe illustrates, some of our most cherished and widely held beliefs about constitutional rights are not part of the written document, but can only be deduced by piecing together hints and clues from it. Moreover, some passages of the Constitution do not even hold today despite their continuing existence. Amendments may have fundamentally altered what the Constitution originally said about slavery and voting rights, yet the old provisos about each are still in the text, unrevised. Through a variety of historical episodes and key constitutional cases, Tribe brings to life this invisible constitution, showing how it has evolved and how it works. Detailing its invisible structures and principles, Tribe compellingly demonstrates the invisible constitution's existence and operative power.
Remarkably original, keenly perceptive, and written with Tribe's trademark analytical flair, this latest volume in Oxford's Inalienable Rights series offers a new way of understanding many of the central constitutional debates of our time.

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

Daniel J. Solove

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Business & Culture -> Culture

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

 

Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cybermobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Long-standing notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance between privacy and free speech, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

 

Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry

Evan Wolfson

Amazon Price: $17.60 List Price: $22.00 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $0.72

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why Marriage Matters offers a compelling and clear discussion of a question at the forefront of our national consciousness. It is the work of a brilliant civil rights litigator who has dedicated his life to the protection of individuals' rights and our Constitution's commitment to equal justice under the law. Above all, it is a thoughtful, straightforward book that brings into sharp focus the human significance of the right to marry in America -- not just for some couples, but for all.

Whatever your personal beliefs, we all can agree that marriage equality provokes both passion and tension, and looms large in our nation's politics. Marriage means many things to many people -- emotionally, spiritually, intellectually -- but in these pages, Evan Wolfson demonstrates a truth that is undeniable: Marriage is the legal gateway to a vast array of tangible and intangible protections, responsibilities, and benefits, most of which cannot be replicated in any other way.

Wolfson is a formidable legal thinker who has participated in landmark cases to end race discrimination in jury trials, to secure the rights of battered married women, and to challenge the abuse of power at the highest level in government. Now, with extraordinary clarity, fascinating stories, and legal and historical examples, he addresses the questions we as Americans are asking ourselves as we consider how marriage equality will affect our lives. Why is the word marriage so important? What are the stakes for America in this civil rights movement? How can people of different faiths reconcile their beliefs with the idea of marriage for same-sex couples? How will allowing gay couples to marry affect children? Here you will find thorough, honest answers -- some that may surprise you, some that will persuade you, many that will move you. Wolfson recalls the history of past battles over marriage and movements for equality, and articulates the everyday acts of discrimination that frame this current movement -- acts of discrimination that, if faced by non-gay Americans, would provoke a resounding cry of injustice.

Marriage matters because it is a foundation upon which most Americans build dreams. It is the cornerstone of commitment one individual makes to another -- a commitment we are taught is the highest expression of love, dedication, and responsibility. In this, the most powerful, authoritative, and fairly articulated book on the subject, Wolfson demonstrates why the right to marry is important -- indeed necessary -- for all couples and for America's promise of equality.

What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America

Ariela J. Gross

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Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History

Editorial Review:

Is race something we know when we see it? In 1857, Alexina Morrison, a slave in Louisiana, ran away from her master and surrendered herself to the parish jail for protection. Blue-eyed and blond, Morrison successfully convinced white society that she was one of them. When she sued for her freedom, witnesses assured the jury that she was white, and that they would have known if she had a drop of African blood. Morrison’s court trial—and many others over the last 150 years—involved high stakes: freedom, property, and civil rights. And they all turned on the question of racial identity.

Over the past two centuries, individuals and groups (among them Mexican Americans, Indians, Asian immigrants, and Melungeons) have fought to establish their whiteness in order to lay claim to full citizenship in local courtrooms, administrative and legislative hearings, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Morrison’s case, these trials have often turned less on legal definitions of race as percentages of blood or ancestry than on the way people presented themselves to society and demonstrated their moral and civic character.

Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Ariela Gross’s book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society. This book reminds us that the imaginary connection between racial identity and fitness for citizenship remains potent today and continues to impede racial justice and equality.

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

Kevin Boyle

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Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle

In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.

And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.

Introduction to Civil Procedure (Introduction to Law Series)

Richard D. Freer

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent and Well Written Text 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book provides an in-depth discussion of the civil procedure in a well written and understandable presentation. It is a lot better than the Glannon's book.

NEED CLARITY IN CIV PRO BUY this BOOK!!!!!!!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book was a godsend unfortunately I bought it a little too late, I wish I would have had it for the entire year instead of the last couple of weeks of class. It has everything including the minute details professors like to test on for finals...If you need civil procedure help..look at this book or listen to the Richard Freer CDS..

Simply Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I agree with the other reviewers that this is an excellent guide to Civil Procedure. The book provides the basics of Civil Procedure and, where appropriate, the little details that can easily trap an unwary student on an exam. Most importantly, the book is peppered with examples that will help crystalize the material. Suprisingly, it also is very easy reading. My impression was that the author actually was interested in making sure the reader understands the material rather than providing a perfunctory compilation of rules. Like one of the prior reviewers, I was essentially lost for the majority of my Civil Procedure class until I bought this book.

Editorial Review:

Written by leading scholars, each title in the "Introduction to Law" series contains comprehensive treatment in black-letter style. Featuring footnotes citing to case law, statutory and other authorities, these volumes are ideal for in-depth research on particular issues and points of law.

Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights

Kenji Yoshino

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Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this remarkable and elegant work, acclaimed Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino fuses legal manifesto and poetic memoir to call for a redefinition of civil rights in our law and culture.

Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.
Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates that American civil rights law has generally ignored the threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity.
At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like an endless parade of groups asking for state and social solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of the covering demand provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity–a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart.
Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences as a gay Asian American. He follows the Romantics in his belief that if a human life is described with enough particularity, the universal will speak through it. The result is a work that combines one of the most moving memoirs written in years with a landmark manifesto on the civil rights of the future.

“This brilliantly argued and engaging book does two things at once, and it does them both astonishingly well. First, it's a finely grained memoir of young man’s struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, and second, it's a powerful argument for a whole new way of thinking about civil rights and how our society deals with difference. This book challenges us all to confront our own unacknowledged biases, and it demands that we take seriously the idea that there are many different ways to be human. Kenji Yoshino is the face and the voice of the new civil rights.” -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“Kenji Yoshino has not only given us an important, compelling new way to understand civil rights law, a major accomplishment in itself, but with great bravery and honesty, he has forged his argument from the cauldron of his own experience. In clear, lyrical prose, Covering quite literally brings the law to life. The result is a book about our
public and private selves as convincing to the spirit as it is to the
mind.” -Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not A Stranger Here

“Kenji Yoshino's work is often moving and always clarifying. Covering elaborates an original, arresting account of identity and authenticity in American culture.”
-Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Of Philosophy at Princeton University

“This stunning book introduces three faces of the remarkable Kenji Yoshino: a writer of poetic beauty; a soul of rare reflectivity and decency; and a brilliant lawyer and scholar, passionately committed to uncovering human rights. Like W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, this book fearlessly blends gripping narrative with insightful analysis to further the cause of human emancipation. And like those classics, it should explode into America's consciousness.”
-Harold Hongju Koh Dean, Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights

“Covering is a magnificent work - so eloquently and powerfully written I literally could not put it down. Sweeping in breadth, brilliantly argued, and filled with insight, humor, and erudition, it offers a fundamentally new perspective on civil rights and discrimination law. This extraordinary book is many things at once: an intensely moving personal memoir; a breathtaking historical and cultural synthesis of assimilation and American equality law; an explosive new paradigm for transcending the morass of identity politics; and in parts, pure poetry. No one interested in civil rights, sexuality, discrimination - or simply human flourishing - can afford to miss it.”
-Amy Chua, author of World on Fire

“In this stunning, original book, Kenji Yoshino demonstrates that the struggle for gay rights is not only a struggle to liberate gays---it is a struggle to free all of us, straight and gay, male and female, white and black, from the pressures and temptations to cover vital aspects of ourselves and deprive ourselves and others of our full humanity. Yoshino is both poet and lawyer, and by joining an exquisitely observed personal memoir with a historical analysis of civil rights, he shows why gay rights is so controversial at present,
why “covering” is the issue of contention, and why the “covering demand,” universal in application, is the civil rights issue of our time. This is a beautifully written, brilliant and hopeful book, offering a new understanding of what is at stake in our fight for
human rights.”
-Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice


From the Hardcover edition.

Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality

Richard Kluger

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Compelling and original arguments and a fresh analysis of America's black & white race relations 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I just finished this book, A Simple Justice, and it is fantastic. It's the story of Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, which is the landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated compulsory public schools in America. But it's so much more than that. After reading this book, I felt almost ashamed of my previous ignorance to the struggles and condition of black america at the hands of almost everyone else in the country. It is comprehensive in its scope and perspicacious in its analysis, sparing no feelings on either (or rather, any) side. I believe myself to be, for the most part, a judicious man when it comes to philosophical or sociological observations, but Kluger was able to open my eyes to angles I had previously missed on issues I thought I had resolved long ago. So if you're not too scared of big books, this one's worth the time.

Editorial Review:

Simple Justice is the definitive history of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the epic struggle for racial equality in this country. Combining intensive research with original interviews with surviving participants, Richard Kluger provides the fullest possible view of the human and legal drama in the years before 1954, the cumulative assaults on the white power structure that defended segregation, and the step-by-step establishment of a team of inspired black lawyers that could successfully challenge the law. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation, Kluger has updated his work with a new final chapter covering events and issues that have arisen since the book was first published, including developments in civil rights and recent cases involving affirmative action, which rose directly out of Brown v. Board of Education.

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts

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Editorial Review:

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty explores the religious freedom implications of defining marriage to include same-sex couples. It represents the only comprehensive, scholarly appraisal to date of the church-state conflicts virtually certain to arise in many spheres of law as a result of the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

No Pity:: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

Joseph P. Shapiro

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Response to Cindy Heilman 4 out of 5 stars.
29 of 32 people found this review helpful.

In regards to the review by Cindy Heilman below, it is apparent that you missed a major point of this book. When you state that "Neither the disabled, homosexuals, nor adoptees are the target of lynching, Jim Crow laws, fire engine hosing, or vicious police dogs."

You must have missed the disability history about Nazi death camps, false imprisonments in institutions, forced sterilization, abuse by caregivers, death by neglect, murder of those with mental disabilities thought to be under demonic controls, murder of disabled children in underdeveloped countries, the list goes on and on. I'm not an expert on the experiences of gays and adoptees, but as far as gays...it seems they face some of the most violent crimes that helped institute hate crime statutes. The history of African-Americans has been tragic and an embarrassment for our country, but they are certainly not alone in facing hatred and violent discrimination.

As for your statement regarding the difference in abilities justifies unequal treatment, you are missing the point that we all have differing abilities and must find ways to use our assets to contribute to society and accommodate our weaknesses. This holds true for any college student who has picked a major that accommodates their strengths while downplaying their weaknesses or any member of any sports team who picks the position that will give the team the best advantage. Disabled people are not asking for unfair advantages, they are asking for equal access. A level playing field. The same opportunities to build on their strengths and contribute to the society that has blocked them out. Even under horrendous Jim Crow Laws, African-Americans were sometimes allowed to go into the back of a restuarant and be served. People with disabilities aren't even allowed to the resturant door sometimes. Although their is a uniqueness to some of the issues surrounding disability, the civil rights aspect of amicus and access are exactly the same.

Read "Make them go away" by Mary Johnson for a more straightforward, updated essay on this situation if you still don't understand.

Editorial Review:

A history of the disability rights movement discusses the ever-growing struggle of disabled people to challenge discrimination and explains how the disabled used their political clout to gain passage of the Americans With Disabilites Act. 25,000 first printing.