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We Dissent: Talking Back to the Rehnquist Court, Eight Cases That Subverted Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Hardcover – Download: Adobe Reader, January 1, 2009

by Michael Avery (Editor)
3.0 3.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings
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The lawyers and legal commentators who contribute to We Dissent unanimously agree that during Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s nineteen-year tenure, the Supreme Court failed to adequately protect civil liberties and civil rights. This is evident in majority opinions written for numerous cases heard by the Rehnquist Court, and eight of those cases are re-examined here, with contributors offering dissents to the Court’s decisions. The Supreme Court opinions criticized in We Dissent suggest that the Rehnquist Court placed the interests of government above the people, and as the dissents in this book demonstrate, the Court strayed far from our constitutional ideals when it abandoned its commitment to the protection of the individual rights of Americans.
Each chapter focuses on a different case—ranging from torture to search and seizure, and from racial profiling to the freedom of political expression—with contributors summarizing the case and the decision, and then offering their own dissent to the majority opinion. For some cases featured in the book, the Court’s majority decisions were unanimous, so readers can see here for the first time what a dissent might have looked like. In other cases, contributors offer alternative dissents to the minority opinion, thereby widening the scope of opposition to key civil liberties decision made by the Rehnquist Court.
Taken together, the dissents in this unique book address the pressing issue of Constitutional protection of individual freedom, and present a vision of constitutional law in the United States that differs considerably from the recent jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court.
Contributors: Michael Avery, Erwin Chemerinsky,Marjorie Cohn, Tracey Maclin, Eva Paterson, Jamin Raskin, David Rudovsky, Susan Kiyomi Serrano, and Abbe Smith.

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  1. Print length
    245 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    NYU Press
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    6.48 x 0.78 x 9.24 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0814707238
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0814707234
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"We Dissent boldly takes the Constitution back from the Rehnquist Court that has reneged on its promises, and eloquently shows us what the Constitution can be at its best — a progressive guardian of liberty, equality, and justice for the most vulnerable." -- David Cole,author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism

"We have long been plagued with an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, and it is refreshing to find this collection of dissenting views, astute and bold, from constitutional scholars. They have been judiciously edited by Michael Avery, a veteran of courtroom battles for civil liberties, and they bring us back to basic principles of equality and justice. This book is a veritable course in constitutional law and an important contribution to the national debate on the rights of citizens." -- Howard Zinn,author of A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present

"The volume is a fine meditation on the values at stake in, and the impact of, modern Supreme Court decision making. Each dissent is preceded by a summary of the case and majority opinion." ― Choice

"We Dissent reminds lawyers that we have a responsibility to think independently and dissent vigorously, and it reminds nonlawyers that good citizenship requires engagement, independence, and, sometimes, dissent. . . . [A]n important contribution to our democratic dialogue." ― Trial

"Whether you agree with the courts opinions or the & dissents, you will find the book provocative." ― Sunday Star Ledger

About the Author

Michael Avery is Professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston and a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. He was a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer for nearly thirty years before joining the Suffolk faculty in 1998. He is co-author of Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation and Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYU Press; First Edition, 1st Printing (January 1, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 245 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0814707238
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0814707234
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.48 x 0.78 x 9.24 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.0 3.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

About the author

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Michael Avery

Michael Avery

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Starting as an ACLU staff lawyer during the Black Panther murder trial in New Haven in 1970, Mike Avery enjoyed an exciting career as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer. As a civil rights lawyer, he represented the victims of police abuse and racial and sexual discrimination. In criminal cases, he defended people charged with everything from peaceful protesting to murder. In San Juan he represented the Puerto Rican novelist Pedro Juan Soto to get justice for the murder of his son by police officers in the infamous Cerro Maravilla case. In Los Angeles, he represented a young Armenian-American charged in a plot to bomb the Turkish Consulate in Philadelphia. In Boston in 2007, working with a team of lawyers, he obtained the largest judgment ever awarded against the FBI, over one hundred million dollars, for the wrongful conviction of four innocent men for murder. His client, Peter Limone, had spent 33 years in prison for a murder of which he was innocent. The crime was actually committed by an FBI informant.

Avery knows the law and the people who break it, including those who are supposed to enforce it. Politically active as well, he has served as the President of the National Lawyers Guild and was one of the founders of the National Police Accountability Project.

Avery also enjoyed a 16-year career as a law professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston. He has published several non-fiction books, including The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, and We Dissent, Talking Back to the Rehnquist Court. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and spent a year as an exchange student in the former Soviet Union at the University of Moscow. After retiring as a professor of law, he obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Bennington College. He writes the Susan Sorella Mystery Series. The Cooperating Witness was published in 2020 and the sequel Murder in Blue in 2023. More mysteries are forthcoming.

Customer reviews

3 out of 5 stars
3 out of 5
4 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

jboy
1.0 out of 5 stars Typical Liberal Screed
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2011
Anti-american "professor" Ayers attacks the Rehnquist court, not on rational grounds, but on the author's complete lack of understanding of our constitution and its roots in western culture. From the sensational (and inaccurate) subtitle to the table of contents, a worthless attempt at academic discourse revealing nothing more than his own socialist predispositions. Unless you already subscribe to his bankrupt ideology or are coerced, perhaps as a student of his, to pay dearly for his predictably biased and unresearched "work" don't bother with his worthless books. This book only serves as a shining example of everything that's wrong with academia. But for that, we thank you.
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mamartinez
5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading.
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2010
This is an absolutely fascinating piece. A great portion of my research interests involve matters of civil rights and liberties, so I was quite thrilled to receive it.

The premise of the book and the central question posed to each of the book's contributors is novel: If you were a Supreme Court Justice on a case that defied our constitution and undermined our civil rights, how would your dissent read?

The authors of each chapter do not disappoint us. Each one addresses a specific Rehnquist Court decision that eroded the rights to which the Constitution entitles us. The arguments are forceful and clear: not a word too many, not a page too long, and not an ounce of jargon. While law and politics are central to my studies, I am not a lawyer and I did not attend law school. Still, the essays are unbelievably accessible, and they must be--these laws and decisions should be well understood and discussed by all of us who are governed by them.

The piece starts off with a thorough introduction that provides background about the Court, the cases, and a bit about the contributing authors. It is quick and to the point while still giving the reader a solid sense of what the purpose of the book is and how each case stands to affect our lives. Essentially, the introduction helps us to understand why these laws, debates, and ideas matter.

Then come the dissents. I won't go into each of them because my praise would grow long and saccharine, but the first chapter starts the book off with a bang. Written by constitutional law expert, author, lawyer, professor, and now Dean of UC Irvine School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky plunges the reader into a driving argument cutting straight to the premise of democracy: are we all equal? (Yes: in classic Chemerinsky style, he dissents from a 1999 decision for *three* main reasons). My heart raced as I closed in on his final paragraph, and I literally wanted to stand up and clap after I finished his last words: "I dissent." Over and over, I was overcome by the earnestness and passion of the authors in this volume, and while I frequently felt enraged about the decisions they addressed, I felt simultaneously heartened. I was holding in my hands the work of good people dedicating their lives to "doing justice."

Each chapter is a thrill, filled with philosophical insights, historical notes dating back to our Constitutional Convention, and most importantly, compelling reasons why decisions on the books must be overturned. These are decisions that replaced the principles of good government with expedience, and condone everything from racism to torture to unlawful search and seizure. I would recommend this as assigned reading in high school AP Government classes, and to college teachers of Law and Society courses; indeed, I plan to recommend the book to professors at my institution. The piece is already pretty affordable, but now that it is available on the Kindle, this one should be in the collection of everyone interested in learning more about what went wrong during the Rehnquist Reign--and how exactly to make things right going forward.

Five stars.
4 people found this helpful
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Atticus
5.0 out of 5 stars Outraged and Energized
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2009
As a former High School Civics teacher, former college professor and current law professor, I was struck by how readable and universal this book was. I would feel comfortable assigning the book or portions of the book to students of all ages. I would also recommend the book for anyone with even a passing interest in current events or our constitution. The introduction and the individual chapters are very accessible, even for someone without a legal background. I had my wife who is non lawyer and hates when I bring my work home, read one chapter, chapter four, to test my hypothesis. She was riveted and outraged. Then we engaged in a long, energized conversation about the issues over a glass of wine. The reason my wife and anyone would be interested and outraged is because the book exposes one of the most powerful institutions in the world, the United States Supreme Court under the "leadership" of Justice Rehnquist, for its often fraudulent perversion of the Constitution and of our civil liberties. You don't have to be a lawyer to know right from wrong. Reading any one of the chapters would also convert someone with a lack of legal sophistication into someone who could hang in a very "legal" conversation with authority.

Each chapter deals with a different topic and therefore can easily be read and digested on a "stand alone" basis or as a strand in a very compelling web. Each author explores a different topic where our core values, timeless social policy issues and constitutional doctrine intersect. For example, the book dissents from very disturbing Supreme Court decisions about racial profiling, racial discrimination and the line between torture and acceptable police tactics.

I found the book empowering on multiple levels: the authors offer inspirational models of how to eloquently rely on passion and logic to disagree with a power structure that systematically ignored fundamental human and civil rights.

After you read this book, if you care at all about our individual rights and liberties, you will not only be outraged, but energized to discuss the issues and perhaps even take action. For mature adults or high school students through graduate students, the book will spark meaningful and soul searching debate.
4 people found this helpful
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