Though accessible to nonspecialist readers, primarily of interest to those already well versed in constitutional law and...
Legal scholars address the complex matter of the 2000 presidential election, lending weight to those who see its outcome as a judicial coup.
For those who have tried to put it out of their minds, Dworkin (Law/NYU and Philosophy/ University College, London; Sovereign Virtue, 2000) offers a helpful summary of that misbegotten election, held on November 7: a close call of votes in Florida and allegations of vote fraud and misleadingly constructed ballots led candidate Al Gore to follow the provisions of Florida law and demand a manual recount in four counties; Florida secretary of state and George W. Bush campaign official Katherine Harris refused to extend the deadline when the recount was not completed on time; suits and countersuits followed; on December 12, the US Supreme Court voted to end the recount, thereby awarding the election to Bush. In a spry and subtle argument, conservative jurist and legal scholar Richard Posner offers a worst-case analysis of what might have happened had the Court not decided so: in the face of an apparently unbreakable deadlock (inasmuch as candidate Bush’s brother, the governor of Florida, might not have certified a Gore victory after a recount), the US Congress would have had to declare an acting president, probably Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; absent the Court’s “pragmatic adjudication,” the country would thereupon have been plunged into a constitutional crisis. Such a crisis, Dworkin retorts, would not necessarily be a bad thing, and in any event, the Court’s decision was a conservative fiat that shamed the nation more than any back-and-forth in courts and Congress would have. Laurence Tribe, Lani Guinier, Richard Pildes, Nelson Polsby, and Cass Sunstein examine other aspects of the Court’s decision, while historian Arthur Schlesinger sketches out a modification of the present winner-take-all Electoral College system so that the winner of the popular vote—in this instance Gore—is henceforth more likely to earn the electoral vote as well.
Though accessible to nonspecialist readers, primarily of interest to those already well versed in constitutional law and electoral procedure.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-56584-737-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“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
SEEN & HEARD
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