| Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted | |||||||||||||||||||||
Ian Millhiser’s debut book tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the people who have suffered the most from it.
In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, Injustices tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the everyday people who have suffered the most from it. America ratified three constitutional amendments to provide equal rights to freed slaves, but the justices spent thirty years largely dismantling these amendments. Then they spent the next forty years rewriting them into a shield for the wealthy and the powerful. Nor do the progressive victories of the Warren era or recent progress on gay rights vindicate the institution. To the contrary, the Court paid little heed to the Constitution’s promise of equal rights for decades, and the Warren Court’s restoration of the Constitution’s promises of equality, free speech, and fair justice for the accused was an historic accident. Indeed, if not for several unpredictable event such as a chief justice’s fatal heart attack and a former Ku Klux Klanman’s dramatic change of heart, Brown v. Board of Education could have gone the other way. Please pre-order Injustices now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound. “More than just an indictment of the Supreme Court, Injustices offers a stirring defense of the role government plays in bettering people’s lives—and a heartbreaking window into the lives that are ruined when the justices place their own agenda above the law.” —Ted Strickland, former Ohio governor and President, Center for American Progress Action Fund “A powerful critique of the Supreme Court, which shows that it has largely failed through American history to enforce the Constitution and to protect our rights. With great clarity and poignant human stories throughout, Ian Millhiser has written a book that all who are interested in American government and our legal system—which should be all of us—must read.” —Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean and distinguished professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law “Ian Millhiser’s Injustices is a powerful reminder that for most of its history, the Supreme Court has erred on the side of protecting the privilege and powers of America's elites—and that it has so often done so by reading the Constitution upside-down. Millhiser has crafted an indictment of the Court’s treatment of workers, minorities, women, voters, and powerless groups, with a deeply researched grounding in history and the law. His dispiriting conclusion is a powerful reminder of how much the Court matters, and how much more it could be.” —Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate |
