Outstanding in every respect.
When the Supreme Court declined to accept the appeal of a 1963 rape case, Justice Arthur Goldberg published an unusual dissent questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty. From this small beginning, Mandery (John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Q: A Novel, 2011, etc.) skillfully traces the building momentum within the country and the court to question the legality of a punishment the Founding Fathers took for granted.
Indeed, by 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the court struck down death penalty statutes so similar to those in 40 other states that executions nationwide came to a halt. Disagreement among Furman’s 5-4 majority—was the death penalty “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment, or was its arbitrary application a violation under the 14th?—and a forceful dissent hinted at a blueprint for states to rewrite their capital-sentencing schemes. By 1976, 35 had done so. In Gregg v. Georgia and its companion cases, the court approved the revised statutes, opening the door to 1,300 state-sponsored executions since. Relying on interviews with law clerks and attorneys, information from economists, criminologists and social scientists, arguments from political and legal scholars, a thorough knowledge of all applicable cases and sure-handed storytelling, Mandery focuses on the strategies of the Legal Defense Fund, the remarkable attorneys who led the charge for abolition, to cover virtually every dimension of the capital punishment debate. The author is especially strong on the individual backgrounds, personalities and judicial philosophies of the justices, the shifting alliances among them and the frustrating contingencies upon which momentous decisions sometimes turn. Even those weary of this topic will be riveted by his insider information about towering figures, lawyers and judges.
Outstanding in every respect.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-23958-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An openly liberal polemic, but nevertheless a brilliant summary of the important legal trends of the last 20 years.
Prominent New York lawyer and television commentator Garbus (Tough Talk, 1998, etc.) lucidly examines the threat he sees developing from an increasingly conservative judicial system.
Since 1980, Republicans have controlled the legal system more and more, the author contends. Reagan's Supreme Court appointments and the ascendancy of the Federalist Society, founded in 1982 and now the country's most powerful legal organization, have succeeded in reversing the liberal Warren Court’s decisions. Although Miranda v. Arizona (1966) guaranteed constitutional protections to criminal suspects, 60 related cases have subsequently been decided with only two rulings benefiting the defendant. In Atwater v. City of Lago Vista (2001), Gail Atwater, driving with two infants in her car, was arrested, handcuffed, and jailed for a seatbelt violation. Bringing her suit to the high court, she lost on grounds that policemen cannot immediately tell whether a suspect is jailable. Chief Justice Rehnquist openly opposes the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which granted women a legal right to an abortion, and in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert P. Casey (1992), he came only one vote short of denying women that right. Any nominee of George W. Bush will probably reverse the 5-4 decision. For 30 years, asserts Garbus, the religious right has successfully pressed to blur the separation of church and state. In Mitchell v. Holmes, argued in 1999, the Court voted 6-3 to uphold a Louisiana law that permitted the state to loan computers and books to parochial schools. Dissenters Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg saw the implicit danger that religious schools could benefit from taxpayer money. Garbus reviews cases covering environmental issues, employee rights, affirmative action, and federal versus state sovereignty. His portraits of the nine justices are most scathing in the cases of hardhearted Rehnquist and incompetent Thomas. He concludes by urging his allies to fight the present prevailing powers.
An openly liberal polemic, but nevertheless a brilliant summary of the important legal trends of the last 20 years.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6918-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Murray has left as his final gift a lovely book of song. (8 pp. b&w photo insert)
A season in the lives of young singers struggling get noticed in the demanding world of opera, alluringly told by prolific writer and tenor Murray (City of the Soul, 2003, etc.).
The author, who died in March 2005, spent 24 weeks during the 2003–04 season with 12 artists in the Lyric Opera of Chicago training program, a launching pad for many great international careers. What makes the training program so special is not only the quality of its singers, but the talented coaches who guide the artists through their exercises and roles, instructing them in dramatic interpretation, language meaning and pronunciation and movement. Murray shines in chronicling the development of the singers’ technique; his prose is gratifying, his dry humor a pleasure. He is wonderfully adept at evoking the particular musical personalities of the singers, and he stands in awe of their courage and professionalism. Murray understatedly brings his own history as an opera singer into the picture when it helps shed light on the challenges faced by his subjects. (Of that career, he says: “[I]t never amounted to much, but it had deeply enriched my life.”) He is sensitive to the aspects of opera that help create “sacred monsters,” singers of such ego and celebrity they are like forces of nature. Aspiring artists are judged day after day, he writes, and rarely given more than a nod of acknowledgement. So if perchance one becomes a great star, he or she may well feel it’s another’s turn to play the supplicant.
Murray has left as his final gift a lovely book of song. (8 pp. b&w photo insert)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-5360-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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