“I Want Ordinary Americans to Feel Like They Have a Stake in How the Constitution is Interpreted and Developed” – Jamal Greene on the Role Rights Play in the U.S. Legal System
Rights have always been an integral part of the American identity. In his compelling new book, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart, legal scholar Jamal Greene examines the evolving role rights have played in U.S. legal history. Commencing with how the Framers of the Constitution originally viewed the role of rights in the judicial process, Greene guides the reader through key moments in U.S. legal history to study the increasingly divisive status rights have assumed over time. In considering key cases and historical figures, Greene studies the polarizing effect rights have had on the country’s culture, and posits the changes necessary in order to move away from the current binary definition of rights. Greene, the Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia University’s Law School, has earned high praise for his first book. Of How Rights Went Wrong, Publishers Weekly raved, “Greene delves deeply into the legal, cultural, and political matters behind rights conflicts, and laces his account with feisty legal opinions and colorful character sketches” and past president of the ACLU Nadine Strossen hailed it as “fastidiously researched and immensely readable.”
