Constitutional scholar Amar (Law/Yale) argues that our understanding of the Bill of Rights has been distorted in two ways. First, he says, the practice of interpreting the Constitution as if clauses are discrete entities rather than part of a whole obscures how the Bill contributes to the establishment of popular sovereignty as well as protecting individual rights: “The genius of the Bill was not to downplay organizational structure but to deploy it; not to impede popular majorities but to empower them.” Second, the impact of the Fourteenth Amendment has been so great on 20th- century legal minds that we now view the Bill only in post-Reconstruction terms, obscuring its original meaning. Amar proceeds by exploring the Bill of Rights as a historical document, stripping away presuppositions that have been added over the years and unveiling the intent of its authors in a clause-by-clause analysis. He then considers the implications of the Fourteenth Amendment for the Bill and specifically the problem of incorporation, i.e., to what extent the Bill is to be applied to actions of state, not just federal, governments. Amar assesses the alternative positions of Suspreme Court justices Frankfurter, Black, and Brennan, then returns to the work of 19th-century jurists to produce his own “refined” theory of incorporation. This is a more subtle approach to incorporating the Bill than he finds among 20th-century jurists, and he proceeds to use it as a guide in reconstructing the meaning of the post—Fourteenth Amendment Bill of Rights. The result enhances the reputation of the Reconstruction generation, for they “took a crumbling and somewhat obscure edifice, placed it on new, high ground, and remade it so that it truly would stand as a temple of liberty and justice for all,” even though the implications in practice are minimal. Impressive legal hair-splitting that may strike general readers as pointless.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-300-07379-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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