A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution
Author: Peter H Irons
Recent changes in the Supreme Court have placed the venerable institution at the forefront of current affairs, making this comprehensive and engaging work as timely as ever. In the tradition of Howard Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States, Peter Irons chronicles the decisions that have influenced virtually every aspect of our society, from the debates over judicial power to controversial rulings in the past regarding slavery, racial segregation, and abortion, as well as more current cases about school prayer, the Bush/Gore election results, and "enemy combatants." A comprehensive history of the people and cases that have changed history, this is the definitive account of the nation's highest court. BACKCOVER: It is such good reading that we allow the author to lead us places in history that we might not have expected to travel. (The Boston Globe)
Publishers Weekly
Presenting a sophisticated narrative history of the Supreme Court, Irons (The Courage of Their Convictions, etc.) illustrates the beguiling legacy left by the Constitution's framers, who conjured up the high Court without providing an instruction manual. Irons is clear about where his ideological sympathy lies, calling Justice William Brennan "my judicial ideal and inspiration" and quoting Brennan's famous formulation that "the genius of the Constitution" rests in "the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs." Irons traces the development of the Court's peculiar institutional workings from its first proceedings under Chief Justice John Jay to the struggle for individual liberties during the successive Warren, Burger and Rehnquist Courts. In characterizing the Court as a bastion of racism, classism and sexism prior to Earl Warren's ascendancy, he often tends to use extended arguments when quick jabs would suffice. But as he delves into the personalities of litigants, justices and senators (who, as far back as 1831, fought fiercely over the confirmations of Supreme Court nominees), Irons proves himself a master of American legal and political history. He is particularly lucid when recounting how Reconstruction reforms, such as the Fourteenth Amendment, that were intended to ensure the liberties of individuals were co-opted by the Gilded Age Court to protect the liberties of business. Irons combines careful research with a populist passion. In doing so, he breathes abundant life into old documents and reminds readers that today's fiercest arguments about rights are the continuation of the endless American conversation. BOMC selection. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Irons, professor of political science and director of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California, San Diego, as well as the author of eight other books on the U.S. Supreme Court, provides an excellent general history of the Court accessible to lay readers. The main theme is the attempts of ordinary citizens to attain their rights (especially of free speech, religious practices, and personal privacy) through appeal to the Court and to change the shape and meaning of our Constitutional system. Irons briefly discusses judicial opinions in major cases throughout history and shows when the Justices chose to apply constitutional principles, often to the detriment of civil rights and to the rights of disadvantaged groups, such as blacks and women. The book ends with the Casey (1992) decision and the presidential election of 1992. This book will give the general populace better understanding of the Constitution and its history.--Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
In the tradition of Howard Zinn's , Irons (political science, U. of California-San Diego looks at the US Supreme Court from the perspective of the people whose legal grievances led to landmark decisions. He takes a sample of 85 cases ranging from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to recent rulings on free speech, racial segregation, abortion, and gay rights, setting them in the social, economic, and cultural context of the time. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
This sweeping history of the Supreme Court will thoroughly aggravate anyone who believes, along with Robert Bork or Justice Antonin Scalia that the Constitution should be read narrowly. Irons (Political Science/Univ. of California, San Diego; May It Please the Court: The First Amendment, 1997, etc.) makes no bones about his ideological stance. To him, the Constitution must be construed in the context of an evolving nation. Not surprisingly, former Justice William Brennan "remains my judicial ideal and inspiration." Irons is at his best when he focuses on those litigants before the Court who were outsiders seeking empowerment: people like Fred Korematsu, who challenged the evacuation of Japanese-Americans during WWII, or Homer Plessy, who in 1892 had the audacity to ride in a Louisiana railroad car reserved for white passengers. The decision to explain the Supreme Court and its evolving doctrines through the stories of those whose cases generated rulings that subsequently affected every citizen makes the book accessible to nonlawyers who have a general interest in legal history. This may be why the chapters that trace the early years of the court make for slow going: the "little guy" litigants with whom Irons identifies are missing, and instead we are left slogging through rehashed material. Finally, while Irons is unabashed about his viewpoint, this candor does nothing to assure readers new to the subject that they are getting the whole, if partisan, story. Irons has a disquieting habit of using loaded adjectives and verbs when describing the thoughts of those justices with whom he disagrees. Thus, Felix Frankfurter "pontificates" and gives a "civics lecture" in an opinionthat Irons views as wrongheaded, and he barely conceals his disdain for justices, like William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, on the other side of the ideological debate. Irons is preaching to the choir. While his history contains a few great stories, it will change no minds. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
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Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Author: Edward S Herman
In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.
Based on a series of case studies -- including the media's dichotomous treatment of "worthy" versus "unworthy" victims, "legitimizing" and "meaningless" Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina -- Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media's behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media's handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
Publishers Weekly
Herman of Wharton and Chomsky of MIT lucidly document their argument that America's government and its corporate giants exercise control over what we read, see and hear. The authors identify the forces that they contend make the national media propagandisticthe major three being the motivation for profit through ad revenue, the media's close links to and often ownership by corporations, and their acceptance of information from biased sources. In five case studies, the writers show how TV, newspapers and radio distort world events. For example, the authors maintain that ``it would have been very difficult for the Guatemalan government to murder tens of thousands over the past decade if the U.S. press had provided the kind of coverage they gave to the difficulties of Andrei Sakharov or the murder of Jerzy Popieluszko in Poland.'' Such allegations would be routine were it not for the excellent research behind this book's controversial charges. Extensive evidence is calmly presented, and in the end an indictment against the guardians of our freedoms is substantiated. A disturbing picture emerges of a news system that panders to the interests of America's privileged and neglects its duties when the concerns of minority groups and the underclass are at stake. First serial to the Progressive. (Oct.)
Table of Contents:
| Introduction | xi | |
| Preface | lix | |
| 1 | A Propaganda Model | 1 |
| 2 | Worthy and Unworthy Victims | 37 |
| 3 | Legitimizing versus Meaningless Third World Elections: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua | 87 |
| 4 | The KGB--Bulgarian Plot to Kill the Pope: Free-Market Disinformation as "News" | 143 |
| 5 | The Indochina Wars (I): Vietnam | 169 |
| 6 | The Indochina Wars (II): Laos and Cambodia | 253 |
| 7 | Conclusions | 297 |
| Appendix 1 | The U.S. Official Observers in Guatemala, July 1-2, 1984 | 309 |
| Appendix 2 | Tagliabue's Finale on the Bulgarian Connection: A Case Study in Bias | 313 |
| Appendix 3 | Braestrup's Big Story: Some "Freedom House Exclusives" | 321 |
| Notes | 331 | |
| Index | 395 |
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