Publisher Description
Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law.
In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, Ian Millhiser tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the everyday people who have suffered the most from it. America ratified three constitutional amendments to provide equal rights to freed slaves, but the justices spent thirty years largely dismantling these amendments. Then they spent the next forty years rewriting them into a shield for the wealthy and the powerful.
In Injustices, Millhiser argues that the Supreme Court has seized power for itself that rightfully belongs to the people's elected representatives, and has bent the arc of American history away from justice.
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“The author’s historical approach presents justices and their cases in the context of the bloody disputes the nation’s highest court was called to adjudicate…An impressive debut offering explanations based on coherence between people, cases, and the events they adjudicated.”
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Kirkus Reviews
About Ian Millhiser
Ian Millhiser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the editor of ThinkProgress Justice. He received a BA in philosophy from Kenyon College and a JD, magna cum laude, from Duke University. He clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and has worked as an attorney with the National Senior Citizens Law Center’s Federal Rights Project, as assistant director for Communications with the American Constitution Society, and as a Teach For America teacher in the Mississippi Delta. His writings have appeared in a diversity of legal and mainstream publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, US News and World Report, the Guardian, and many others.
About Joe Barrett
Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.