Review by Choice Review
Konvitz, the author of many esteemed books and articles in the realm of constitutional law and civil liberties, is a highly regarded professor emeritus at Cornell University. As such, he is eminently qualified to prepare this text on the extension of the Bill of Rights to the states. Konvitz focuses on the history of Supreme Court decision making, which has made more and more of the Bill of Rights guarantees applicable to the states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. He notes that, although the Constitution does not rank these rights in terms of their importance, still the Supreme Court has effectively done so in its decisions over time. The consequence of this has been one Bill of Rights for the national government, one for the states, and another (unwritten) evolving set of rights. The book may be compared with Melvin I. Urofsky's A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States (1988) and Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights (CH, Jan'99). The text is clearly written and contains a useful set of indexes at the end. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above. R. A. Carp University of Houston
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
