by David L. Faigman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2004
A diffusive, but always interesting, exploration of science in the law.
Law is more art than science. Yet the law adds to and subtracts from its knowledge base, like science, and relies on scientific findings for guidance.
So observes Faigman (Law/Univ. of California, Hastings; Legal Alchemy, not reviewed), noting that the layers of science that run through American case law produce sometimes puzzling results: “The Constitution . . . is a strange admixture of abiding fundamental values and archaic and obsolete natural philosophy,” and “the Supreme Court adheres to constitutional doctrine sometimes in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” Even so, Faigman adds, the flexibility of the Constitution allows for endless new layerings. Thus, even as vestiges of the anthropology that defended slaveholding in the Dred Scott case—and that made Thomas Jefferson wonder whether he were right in the matter of “all men are created equal”—continue to float about in the depths of the law, contemporary jurists draw on the latest sociological findings of the role of race in, say, educational attainment to argue playing field–leveling programs pro and con. Thus, too, Justice Stevens was recently moved to remark that “if a constitutional rule is premised on empirical facts, then the rule should change when the facts, or our knowledge of the facts, change,” concurring with Justice O’Connor’s hopeful determination that while today using race to balance student-body composition is necessary, “twenty-five years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interests approved today.” (Notes Faigman, “It will be the social scientists of 2028 who will tell us whether Justice O’Connor’s prediction has come true.”) The law’s admission of and reliance on science—especially statistics, that most empirical of disciplines—is sometimes a source of conflict. An even greater conflict, Faigman argues, is the failure of the Court to develop a “set or systematic criteria by which to measure constitutional facts”: that is, to develop a science of its own.
A diffusive, but always interesting, exploration of science in the law.Pub Date: June 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-8050-7274-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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