Enforcing Equality: Congress, the Constitution, and the Protection of Individual Rights / Edition 1

by Rebecca E Zietlow

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814797075
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2006
Pages:	265
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Rebecca E. Zietlow is professor of law at the University of Toledo College of Law.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
2 Congress and Rights before the Civil War
3 Belonging, Protection, and Equality: The Reconstruction Congress
4 Belonging and Social Citizenship: The New Deal and the Wagner Act
5 To Secure These Rights: The 1964 Civil Rights Act
6 The New Parity Debate
7 Rights of Belonging and Popular Constitutionalism
8 Considering Rights of Belonging, Moral Values, and Community
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Zietlow’s work turns scholarship in this area on its head. This provocative book will prove of interest to a very wide audience.”
-Choice,

“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

“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

Reva Siegel

"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)

Editorial Reviews

"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

"Zietlows work turns scholarship in this area on its head. This provocative book will prove of interest to a very wide audience."

Choice

"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

Zietlow’s work turns scholarship in this area on its head. This provocative book will prove of interest to a very wide audience.”
-Choice

From the Publisher