Alas, by Evan Bernick — a review of Akhil Amar’s new book, Born Equal. I’m not sure whether this review is entirely fair, but boy, Bernick (who calls Amar “an engaging writer and a splendid storyteller”) is one of the best writers and polemicists in the legal academy. His first paragraph:
Whether written or unwritten, young or old, constitutions can’t compel the construction of institutions or the enforcement of norms any more than maps can create fences, checkpoints, or border patrols. And yet constitutions are powerful; they produce effects. Constitutional power may take the form of physical force; directions that are regarded as legitimate; or enhanced collective ability to accomplish desired ends. Like all power, constitutional power may rarely register at all, as people define the politically possible with reference to constitutions without realizing it and take their institutions and norms for granted.
And from the book review archives, Frederick Weiner, American Law For The Coffee Table — An Impossible Dream, available on JStor. I’m not sure what inspired Weiner to review a law professor’s coffee table book 50 years ago in the Supreme Court Review, but it’s an entertaining read, and also an interesting window into constitutional debate half a century ago. (“Not even the pictures pass muster,” Weiner writes, arguing that the pictures of Charles Evans Hughes and Roscoe Pound are misdated/miscaptioned, and that a picture of James Otis is of the wrong James Otis.)
And even deeper into the archives, recent events inspired me to reread William F. Buckley’s 1962 National Review editorial, The Question of Robert Welch, announcing a schism with the leader of the John Birch Society. As to an accusation that he was succumbing to cancel culture, Buckley wrote:
That dilemma weighs on conservatives throughout America. It is not a dilemma imposed by the pressure of Liberal or Communist objections to Mr. Welch. If not a single criticism had been made of Mr. Welch, by the Liberal press, the dilemma would exist just the same, and conservatives sooner or later would have to face it.
This 2010 report by the Heritage Foundation describes the editorial as “expelling Welch from the conservative movement,” and argues that “rather than dividing the conservative cause, Buckley had strengthened it.” Interestingly, the Heritage report also notes with praise that “Buckley also took a firm stand against anti-Semitism . . .”
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