Synopses & Reviews
In
Enforcing Equality, Rebecca E. Zietlow assesses Congress's historical role in interpreting the Constitution and protecting the individual rights of citizens, provocatively challenging conventional wisdom that courts, not legislatures, are best suited for this role.
Specifically focusing on what she calls “rights of belonging”—a set of positive entitlements that are necessary to ensure inclusion, participation, and equal membership in diverse communities—Zietlow examines three historical eras: Reconstruction, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era of the 1960s. She reveals that in these key periods when rights of belonging were contested and defined, Congress has played the role of protector of rights at least as often as the Supreme Court has adopted this role. Enforcing Equality also engages in a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Congress as a protector of rights, comparing the institutional strengths and weaknesses of Congress and the courts as protectors of the rights of belonging.
With the recent new appointments to the Supreme Court and Congressional elections in November 2006, this timely book argues that individual rights are best enforced by the political process because they express the values of our national community, and as such, litigation is no substitute for collective political action.
Review
“Zietlows work turns scholarship in this area on its head. This provocative book will prove of interest to a very wide audience.”
-Choice,
Review
“Zietlow performs a valuable service in probing the belief that courts are, by historical tradition, and institutional design, better protectors of minority rights than a legislative body such as Congress.”
-Reva Siegel,Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Review
“This book breaks new ground in the study of equality rights in America and will interest any reader seeking more than the conventional wisdom.”
-Harvard Law Review,
Review
“Zietlow’s work turns scholarship in this area on its head. This provocative book will prove of interest to a very wide audience.”
“Zietlow performs a valuable service in probing the belief that courts are, by historical tradition, and institutional design, better protectors of minority rights than a legislative body such as Congress.”
“This book breaks new ground in the study of equality rights in America and will interest any reader seeking more than the conventional wisdom.”
Synopsis
Build It Now puts forward a clear and innovative vision of a socialist future, and at the same time shows how concrete steps can be taken to make that vision a reality. It shows how the understanding of capitalism can itself become a political act—a defense of the real needs of human beings against the ongoing advance of capitalist profit.
Throughout the book, Lebowitz addresses the concerns of people engaged in struggle to create a better world, but aware that this struggle must be informed by the realities of the twenty-first century. Many chapters of the book began life as addresses to worker organizations in Venezuela, where worker self-management is on the agenda. Written by an eminent academic, this is far more than an academic treatise. The book brings an internationalist outlook and vast knowledge of global trends to bear on concrete efforts to transform contemporary society.
Build It Now is a testament to the ongoing vitality of the Marxist tradition, drawing on its deep resources of analytical insight and moral passion and fusing them into an essential guide to the struggles of our time.
About the Author
Michael Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of Beyond Capital: Marxs Political Economy of the Working Class, winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize for 2004, and Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century. He is Director, Programme in Transformative Practice and Human Development, Centro Internacional Miranda, in Caracas, Venezuela.