We shall overcome : a history of civil rights and the law /

Utilizing history and political science, Tsesis (Loyola University of Chicago, School of Law) writes a unique book that explores the nature of civil rights law in the US. This book views civil rights from both a historical and doctrinal perspective. Tsesis works from liberty and revolution through the impact of the Warren Court. His grasp of material through each century, decade, and political time frame allows the reader to understand the various backstories associated with cases and legislation. His work is innovative in providing context for each case he discusses, yet not burdening the reader with too much superfluous information. Tsesis's vast knowledge of both historical and contemporary legal scholars gives the reader the ability to view justices and politicians over generations. The book at times critiques both the Right and the Left for their failures to effect social and legal change. Tsesis does a great service to the field as he intersperses, with a thoughtful yet objective perspective, how civil rights law in the US might expand in the future. This book is innovative and accessible at times, but may be more suited for the legal scholar than a layperson or undergraduate in an introduction course. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. A. R. S. Lorenz Ramapo College

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. (Apr.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.