The lawyers and legal commentators who contribute to We Dissent
unanimously agree that during Chief Justice William Rehnquist's
nineteen-year tenure, the Supreme Court failed to adequately protect
civil liberties and civil rights. This is evident in majority opinions
written for numerous cases heard by the Rehnquist Court, and eight of
those cases are re-examined here, with contributors offering dissents to
the Court's decisions. The Supreme Court opinions criticized in We
Dissent suggest that the Rehnquist Court placed the interests of
government above the people, and as the dissents in this book
demonstrate, the Court strayed far from our constitutional ideals when
it abandoned its commitment to the protection of the individual rights
of Americans.
Each chapter focuses on a different case--ranging from torture to search
and seizure, and from racial profiling to the freedom of political
expression--with contributors summarizing the case and the decision, and
then offering their own dissent to the majority opinion. For some cases
featured in the book, the Court's majority decisions were unanimous, so
readers can see here for the first time what a dissent might have looked
like. In other cases, contributors offer alternative dissents to the
minority opinion, thereby widening the scope of opposition to key civil
liberties decision made by the Rehnquist Court.
Taken together, the dissents in this unique book address the pressing
issue of Constitutional protection of individual freedom, and present a
vision of constitutional law in the United States that differs
considerably from the recent jurisprudence of the United States Supreme
Court.
Contributors: Michael Avery, Erwin Chemerinsky, Marjorie Cohn,
Tracey Maclin, Eva Paterson, Jamin Raskin, David Rudovsky, Susan Kiyomi
Serrano, and Abbe Smith.
