Frontiers on Rights
FELLMAN, DAVID
Frontiers on Rights With Liberty and Justice For All, by Harold V. Knight. Oceana Publications. 301 pp. $6. Political and Civil Rights in the United States,, by Thomas I. Emerson, David Haber,...
...Now a third edition, in which Professor Norman Dorsen, director of the Arthur Garfield Hays civil liberties program at New York University, collaborated, has appeared, in two hefty volumes selling at a hefty price...
...Frontiers on Rights With Liberty and Justice For All, by Harold V. Knight...
...A second edition appeared in 1958, but by this time the collection had grown to two substantial volumes, which were sold at a much higher price...
...World...
...Indeed, since there are few things Americans enjoy more than debate about the meaning of the Constitution, a reading of this documentary history will produce pleasure as well as insight into our Constitutional development...
...Perhaps the word "compiled" is the wrong word to use here, since Pollak has supplied far more textual analysis of his own than one usually finds in a documentary history, and many of the selections are cut up into short segments, with two or more often in juxtaposition with each other, so that the reader readily gets the flavor of famous historical arguments over the meaning of the Constitution...
...Those who cannot afford to spend $45 for these two volumes should, at the very least, see to it that the local library has a set...
...A concluding chapter draws attention to what Knight calls "the frontier issues" of civil liberties...
...Though there are a few minor errors in the book, and a more careful proofreading might have eliminated the misspelled words, Knight has examined the main interpretations of the Bill of Rights with considerable skill and insight, and, above all, with enthusiastic commitment...
...2274 pp...
...The Constitution and the Supreme Court: A Documentary History, by Louis H. Pollak...
...Written in rather breezy and nontechnical language, Knight's book is designed for the non-specialized, interested layman...
...Except for this omission, this collection remains the best we have on the subject...
...Clearly this book is the product of a thoughtful and well-informed mind...
...These relate to the impact of mass communications, the effects of the new knowledge of the behavioral sciences upon our attitudes towards treatment or punishment of various types of offenders, the dangers implicit in the growth of the "military-industrial elite," and the impact of urbanization upon individual rights...
...While professional students of American Constitutional law will find these two volumes especially useful, they deserve a place in the library of the interested layman who is seriously involved in his country's problems...
...The second volume deals mainly with civil liberties, First Amendment rights, due process in criminal trials, the concept of the equal protection of the laws, and the right to vote, including the question of reapportionment...
...The main new feature of this volume is the tremendous amount of material assembled on the subject of academic freedom, a clear sign that academic freedom is rapidly attaining the status of a fully-recognized legal right in the United States...
...it is truly a magnificent body of reading matter on some of the country's most urgent and interesting problems...
...His reflections and value judgments are summed up in his book, With Liberty and Justice for All...
...The chief weakness of this collection of materials has always been its omission of the subject of the rights of defendants in criminal cases...
...923 pp...
...Little, Brown...
...In The Constitution and the Supreme Court, the learned dean of the Yale Law School, Louis H. Pollak, has compiled a superb collection of documentary materials on the history of the Constitution and its interpretation by the Supreme Court...
...The growing responsibilities of the Federal Government for the definition and protection of the basic rights of the American citizen are made abundantly clear...
...A great deal of attention is given to the administration of criminal justice, but this reflects the present preoccupation of the Supreme Court...
...The omission is unfortunate because this is one of the most active and significant branches of the law dealing with civil rights...
...Political and Civil Rights in the United States,, by Thomas I. Emerson, David Haber, and Norman Dorsen...
...Presumably this is because these volumes are designed primarily for law students, and questions involving defendants' rights are taken up in the course on criminal law...
...In 1952, Professor Thomas I. Emerson of the Yale Law School and Professor David Haber of the Rutgers University Law School published a fine collection—Political and Civil Rights in the United States—of cases and related materials on political and civil rights...
...The second volume deals with discrimination in various segments of the nation's life, such as voting, education, employment, housing, public accommodations, and various public services...
...The first volume deals with freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and other individual rights...
...After considering the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the writing and ratification of the Constitution, Pollak's first volume is concerned with the establishment of judicial review and the Supreme Court's decisions relating to the distribution of the power to govern between national and state authority...
...Reviewed by David Fellman Aveteran worker in the vineyard of civil liberties, Harold V. Knight served for a decade as executive director of the Colorado Civil Liberties Union, and he has been involved in civil liberties causes during most of his adult life...
Vol. 31 • November 1967 • No. 11
