Provocative reading for anyone concerned about the intersection of race and capital punishment.
The story of the Supreme Court decision McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), which underscores “the lingering racial and socioeconomic inequalities endemic to capital punishment in the United States.”
In 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia, Warren McCleskey, an African-American, was arrested for killing a white police officer during a furniture store robbery. After years of litigation, writes Maratea (The Politics of the Internet: Political Claims-making in Cyberspace and How It’s Affecting Modern Political Activism, 2014, etc.), his death penalty sentencing was upheld by the Supreme Court in a decision that overlooked “compelling empirical data suggesting that Georgia’s death process was replete with systemic racial bias.” McCleskey was executed in 1991. In this thoughtful and disturbing account, the author traces the story of the case. He argues not that McCleskey was innocent but that he was sentenced to death under a system in which killers of white people were four times more likely as killers of blacks to be sentenced to death. The latter assertion, made by McCleskey’s lawyers, was based on a “detailed and peer-reviewed” study of 2,500 Georgia murder cases by University of Iowa law professor David C. Baldus. He concluded that all individuals convicted of murdering whites were far more likely to receive the death penalty. In its 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the defense failed to show evidence of deliberate bias by law officials and dismissed the data on disparities in sentencing as inevitable in the criminal justice system. Noting that the decision “affirmed institutionalized racial disparities” in the capital punishment system, Maratea examines the force of “old habits of mind and racial attitudes” going back to the Civil War era. He finds that “capital punishment has borne a close resemblance to lynching in Georgia, where more extralegal executions of black Americans occurred than in any other state.” As lynchings declined in the 20th-century South, “the infliction of the death penalty by the courts increased,” according to historian William S. McFeely.
Provocative reading for anyone concerned about the intersection of race and capital punishment.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4798-8860-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
A concise civics handbook that focuses a spotlight on the House's design and where its leadership does not measure up.
In the third volume in the Fundamentals of American Government series, political writer Spieler (co-author: Selecting a President, 2012) takes us on a well-organized tour of the U.S. House of Representatives and introduces the institution's inner workings and history.
The author throws into stark relief the shallowness of much news reporting about the blockages caused by bipartisanship in the House. Spieler helps enrich understanding of national-level policy debates in two ways. First, he shows the degree to which the functioning of the House is under tight control of the majority party through the speaker and the Rules Committee. Second, he draws out comparisons and differences with the Senate, where rules and procedures—such as the filibuster and supermajority vote thresholds—protect the minority. The author also provides a blow-by-blow account of the political combat and legislative maneuvering that secured the passage of President Barack Obama’s health care plan, which exemplifies how the House’s structure and rules shape debate and policy outcomes. The speaker of the House, a constitutionally defined function, is “usually” the leader of the majority party. He or she decides the agenda, and that party's control is exercised through the Rules Committee, where—unlike every other House Committee, which “roughly mirrors” the makeup of the full House—the majority party enjoys a 9-4 majority. This committee, writes Spieler, “enables the leadership of the majority party…to tightly control the manner in which legislation is debated, amended, and voted in the chamber.” Every bill presented is accompanied by its own rule. Tracing the evolution of House procedures from the era of segregation, the author shows how the Democratic Study Group worked to reform the institution. With its work completed, the group dissolved. But then came Newt Gingrich, ushering in a new phase of partisanship.
A concise civics handbook that focuses a spotlight on the House's design and where its leadership does not measure up.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04036-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A thorough, albeit somewhat premature, biographical portrait.
Digging into the life career of the elusive chief justice.
CNN legal analyst Biskupic, who was the Supreme Court correspondent at the Washington Post and has written biographies on Sonia Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia, and Sandra Day O’Connor, is perfectly positioned to dissect the first decade-plus tenure of Chief Justice John Roberts (b. 1955). Appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 after the sudden death of William Rehnquist, Roberts, at only age 50, was chosen for his conservative bona fides, his Ivy League education, the many cases he had argued before the Supreme Court, and his resistant views on affirmative action and voting rights, among other expressed opinions. Indeed, in his general approach to law, Roberts has proven that he is, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared, “born conservative.” Yet he has also made some intriguing decisions—e.g., finding the core of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare—the provision upholding the individual insurance mandate—constitutional in the watershed case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012). While his 2013 Selby County v. Holder decision “eviscerating a key section of the Voting Rights Act” addressed what he perceived as the “failure of racial remedies in America”—as Biskupic writes, it “marked the first time since the 19th century that the Supreme Court struck down a civil rights law protecting people based on race”—he seems, on the basis of other rulings, concerned that his court is delineated solely along political lines. After Scalia’s death in February 2016, the court was left without a successor for more than 400 days thanks to political maneuvering and the Republican blocking of President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland—a difficult period for the court. As the author demonstrates in her incisive analysis, the 5-4 “conservative-liberal fault line” has prevailed—e.g., in the upholding of Donald Trump’s Muslim ban.
A thorough, albeit somewhat premature, biographical portrait.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-465-09327-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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