Unit 5: What Rights Does the Bill of Rights Protect?

Unit Bibliography
Dershowitz, Alan M. America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles that Transformed our Nation. New York: Warner Books, 2004. 608pp. ISBN: 978-0-44652-058-4. Dershowitz, a Professor of Law at Harvard University, has written short sketches of the most influential trials in America beginning with the Peter Zenger and Boston Massacre trials of the colonial era to the cases of the terrorist detainees at Guantanamo and on the United States mainland.

Foster, James C., and Leeson, Susan M. Constitutional Law: Cases in Context. Vol. II: Part A and B. Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998. 1184pp. ISBN: 978-0-13568-759-8. Each case in this volume begins with the setting or context in which the case arose. Highlights of the Supreme Court arguments as well as summaries of the briefs and the Court's decisions are presented for each case. An opening section on "Understanding the Supreme Court" is very helpful. This volume deals with religion, speech, press, and assembly cases. It also deals with Fourteenth Amendment cases. Part B is concerned with voting rights, privacy, and personal autonomy rights as well as the constitutional rights of the criminally accused Very readable and accessible for high school students.

Hall, Kermit L. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 1272pp. ISBN: 978-0-19517-661-2. This invaluable reference guide contains brief articles about justices, constitutional topics, and landmark Supreme Court decisions. Articles appear alphabetically.

Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 672pp. ISBN: 978-0-19531-018-4. Traces the social and political history, as well as legal interpretations of civil rights issues from the 1880s through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Insightful and interesting.

Lewis, Anthony. Gideon's Trumpet. New York: Random House, 1964. 288pp. ISBN: 978-0-67972-312-7. A very readable and widely acclaimed account of Gideon v. Wainwright (1963). Gideon's case reflected the emergence of a nationwide concern for equal justice of the poor. In a unanimous ruling, the Court established the right to counsel in every felony or potentially lengthy imprisonment case.

Lewis, Anthony. Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment. New York: Random House, 1991. 368pp. ISBN: 978-067973-939-5. Another important case study of a landmark Supreme Court case. The book provides background and context for the decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the Supreme Court adopted a new legal standard governing the law of libel as it relates to public officials.

O'Connor, Sandra Day. The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice. New York: Random House, 2004. 352pp. ISBN: 978-081296-747-0. The High Court's first female justice reflects on her experience, some landmark cases, and the Constitution. Very readable.

Perry, Michael J. We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 288pp. ISBN: 978-019515-125-1. Historical background of the Fourteenth Amendment and an examination of the norms the Fourteenth Amendment established. Separate chapters deal with race and affirmative action, sexual orientation, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide.