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Legal Theory Bookworm

By Lawrence Solum

The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law by Alexander Tsesis. Here is a description:

Tsesis, a professor of law and author of The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom, offers an ambitious history of how the Supreme Court, presidential orders, and state and federal legislative bodies have affected the ability of minorities to secure their civil rights. As the history unfolds readers will find it hard not feel outrage at the shameful complicity of the Supreme Court, who, following the Civil War, chose to interpret the Constitution and Civil Rights Amendments in a literalist way, allowing the southern states to continue to disenfranchise African-Americans. But this history also includes the progress, however imperfect, made in securing civil rights since WWII, when African-Americans returning from the war and women on the home front would no longer tolerate the endemic pre-war racism and sexism. Tsesis is effective at describing the infrastructure of that progress, foremost the passage of 1960s Civil Rights legislation that ensured voting rights and prohibited discrimination in housing and employment. The author also covers the women's suffrage movement, examines the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII, and considers the growth of legal protections of private consensual sexual conduct. As Tsesis shows, the battle for civil rights in America is one whose history is filled with abuses as well as, in the last fifty years, genuine progress.

And from the blurbs:

This impressive book goes beyond existing works by showing how America?s commitment to equal rights constantly collides with its commitment to liberty. Richard Delgado, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

"Tsesis has written an astonishingly clear and compelling history of what most people would define as ''civil rights'' over the past two centuries. It is consistently illuminating." Sanford Levinson, University of Texas School of Law

Anyone interested in obtaining a broad overview of Americans' contested history of popular, legislative, and judicial efforts to achieve and to obstruct racial and gender equality will benefit from reading We Shall Overcome. Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School

Alexander Tsesis presents a full, thoughtful, and readable history of civil rights in the United States--an outstanding account from the optimistic, liberal perspective that modern advances are the working out of the egalitarian vision of the American founders.  Michael Les Benedict, author of The Blessings of Liberty

Alex Tsesis, one of our leading constitutional scholars, superbly demonstrates how the struggle for civil rights in the United States has evolved over the past two centuries. His sweeping synthesis, combining a sure grasp of legal and political history, provides a perfect foundation for understanding why the issues surrounding minority rights and grievances remain such a dominant force in our nation today. David Oshinsky, University of Texas

"All citizens would be wise to read We Shall Overcome." Eleanor J. Bader, New York Law Journal

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 18, 2009 (boomark / email).