Volume 45, Number 14 · September 24, 1998
Pursuing the Pursuit of Happiness
By Laurence H. Tribe
A New Birth of Freedom: Human Rights, Named and Unnamed
by Charles L. Black Jr.
Grosset/Putnam, 175 pp., $22.95
Most of us have long taken for granted the promise of our Constitution that certain core liberties—including the freedoms of speech, press, and religion—cannot be abridged by the states or by the federal government without extraordinary justification. A point easily forgotten is that it was not always so—that, for nearly the first eighty years of our Constitution's history, the Bill of Rights protected these vital liberties only from interference by the federal government. The degree to which the states were obliged to respect the civil liberties of their own residents was largely a matter for the states themselves to decide.[1] One need only recall the history of slavery to recognize how hollow is a guarantee of liberty that binds only half the government.
Review, 4364 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |