The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide - Softcover

Monk, Linda R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932765866 ISBN 13: 9780932765864

Publisher: Close Up Foundation, 2000

Synopsis

With a foreword by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, its highest honor for media about the law.

The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide offers a sophisticated and balanced analysis of the Bill of Rights that is accessible to everyday citizens. The book explores the history of the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, explains how the Supreme Court has interpreted each right, and examines the role of citizens in enforcing them.

Stories of the ordinary people who made the Bill of Rights come alive are featured throughout. Among them are people like Simon Tam, whose 10-year trademark battle for his band The Slants ended in a Supreme Court victory; the 13-year old Mary Beth Tinker, whose school suspension for wearing a black armband protesting the Vietnam War prompted the Court to declare that students are also protected by the First Amendment; Clarence Earl Gideon, whose handwritten petition to the Supreme Court--sent from prison--led the Court to rule that a poor person has the right to a lawyer in felony cases; and Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper who became a national leader in the civil rights movement. Such people prove that, in the words of Judge Learned Hand, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court, can save it."

The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide explores the history, scope, and meaning of the first ten amendments--as well as of the Fourteenth Amendment, which nationalized the Bill of Rights and extended new rights of equality.

About this title

About the Author

Linda R. Monk, J.D., is a constitutional scholar, journalist, and award-winning author. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she twice received the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, its highest honor for public education about the law. Her books include The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution, Ordinary Americans: U.S. History Through the Eyes of Everyday People, and The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide. For more than 25 years, Monk has written commentary for newspapers nationwide-including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Huffington Post.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the second female justice to be confirmed to the Supreme Court and the author of My Own Words.

Edition details

• Publisher: Close Up Foundation
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0932765866
• ISBN 13: 9780932765864
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 254