cover image Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted

Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted

Ian Millhiser. Nation, $27.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-56858-456-0

This book is a sustained attack, reaching back to the post–Civil War era, on the Supreme Court. To the author, its justices are a set of villains—men of power who manipulated constitutional law to favor the already favored and keep the less fortunate within legal straitjackets. Millhiser, a senior constitutional policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, delivers arguments that are muscular and well-substantiated. They won’t please today’s conservatives, who, along with most justices, Millhiser sees as defenders of money and privilege. The trouble is that his arguments are not new. Also, because unrelieved (save for occasional praise for the likes of Earl Warren), they wear out the reader. One would hope that the author had some solutions to the Court’s composition and actions to offer, but all he states is “the only practical solution to bad Supreme Court justices is good Supreme Court justices.” Surely that is the case, whatever your legal and political views. Do we need an entire book to arrive at that conclusion? Liberals have found ways around its constitutional roadblocks before, and Millhiser might have shown us how they’d done so. [em]Agent: Susan Rabiner Literary Agency. (Apr.) [/em]