A legal scholar advises presidents to read the Constitution with great care.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Brettschneider (Political Science/Brown Univ.; Civil Rights and Liberties: Cases and Readings in Constitutional Law and American Democracy, 2013, etc.) was shocked that “proposals to violate the Constitution that had been the stuff of far-fetched classroom hypotheticals” were part of Donald Trump’s agenda. The author responded in articles for Politico, Time.com, and the New York Times, which became the basis for this pointed, cogent, and authoritative analysis of presidential policy and power. Addressing future presidents (and certainly the current office holder) and all citizens, Brettschneider parses the text of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, offers historical background to illuminate the reasons for and controversy over provisions, identifies salient exemplary cases, and concludes with recommendations for any president. He distinguishes between an originalist position, which reads the documents “according to the historical meaning of the words at the time of their passage,” and a “value-based reading,” which asks, “what is our best understanding of the moral principles of the Constitution enshrined in its text and in our case law?” Clearly, the author advocates a value-based reading, since originalists sometimes fail to investigate the history underlying certain provisions. Focusing on a question that arose during the George W. Bush administration regarding the use of “enhanced interrogation,” Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the ban on cruel and unusual punishment did not apply, since extracting information is not technically punishment. Brettschneider argues, however, that the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, as stipulated in the Bill of Rights, was imported from the British Bill of Rights to end “the arbitrary and cruel abuses—especially torture—committed by kings and queens against their subjects.” The author offers a clear explanation of many complex issues, such as the provisions of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law; and the process involved in impeachment, including the question of whether obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense.
A cleareyed, accessible, and informative primer: vital reading for all Americans.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-65212-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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“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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