Now with a new epilogue-- an unprecedented and unwavering history of
the Supreme Court showing how its decisions have consistently favored
the moneyed and powerful.
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. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of
union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy. Nor is the modern
Court a vast improvement, with its incursions on voting rights and its
willingness to place elections for sale.
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 the Warren era and the few years
following it, progressive justices restored the Constitution's promises
of equality, free speech, and fair justice for the accused. But,
Millhiser contends, that was an historic accident. Indeed, if it weren't
for several unpredictable events, Brown v. Board of Education could have
gone the other way.
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.
