How rights went wrong : why our obsession with rights is tearing America apart
Publication Information
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.
Physical Description
xxxvi, 299 pages ; 24 cm
Summary
"An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how the explosion of rights is dividing America, and shows how we can build a better system of justice"--
Rights are a sacred part of American identity-- and also are the source of some of our greatest divisions. A system of legal absolutism distorts our law, debases our politics, and exacerbates our differences rather than helping to bridge them. Greene believes that the Founders preferred to leave rights to legislatures and juries, not judges. It is because of the Founders' own racial discrimination-- and subsequent missteps by the Supreme Court-- that courts gained such outsized power over Americans' rights. Greene shows how we can recover America's original vision of rights, while updating them to confront the challenges of the twenty-first century. -- adapted from jacket
Contents
- Foreword / by Jill Lepore
- Part I: How rights became trumps. Getting the Bill of Rights right ; Rights meet race ; Rightsism
- Part II: No justice, no peace. "Too much justice" ; When rights collide ; When rights divide
- Part III: Rehabilitating rights. Disability ; Affirmative action ; Campus speech.