Civil Rights in American Law, History, and Politics

This book charts the ambiguous and contested meanings of civil rights in law and culture, confronting important questions about race in contemporary America.

Austin Sarat (Edited by)

9781107039292, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 2014

266 pages
24 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.8 kg

Civil Rights in American Law, History, and Politics charts the ambiguous and contested meanings of civil rights in law and culture and confronts important questions about race in contemporary America. How important is civil rights in America's story of possibility and change? How has it transformed the very meaning of citizenship and identity in American culture? Why does the subject of race continue to haunt the American imagination and play such a large role in political and legal debates? Do affirmative action and multiculturalism promise a way out of racial polarization, or do they sharpen and deepen it? Are there new and better ways to frame our commitment to equal justice? This book brings together the work of five distinguished scholars to critically assess the place of civil rights in the American story. It offers different ways of talking about civil rights and frames through which we can address issues of civil rights in the future.

1. Race law cases in the American story Devon W. Carbado and Rachel Moran
2. Commentary: race law cases in the American story: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl Grace Lee
3. Race is evidence: (mis)characterizing blackness in the American civil rights story Montré D. Carodine
4. Montré D. Carodine's race is evidence of parenting in America: another civil rights story Tanya Asim Cooper
5. Blurring the color-blind line: eroding the dichotomy between color blindness and color consciousness in civil rights in the American story Mark Brilliant
6. What line? Fredrick Vars
7. Reframing the civil rights narrative: from compliance to collective impact Susan Sturm
8. Susan Sturm's reframing the civil rights narrative: from compliance to collective impact Steven Hobbs
9. Civil rights and the myth of moral progress Richard Thompson Ford
10. The best time of your life: reflections on the myth of moral progress and the continuing evolution of civil rights law Ronald Krotoszynski.

Subject Areas: Human rights & civil liberties law [LNDC], Law [L], Civil rights & citizenship [JPVH1], Human rights [JPVH], Politics & government [JP]