Reviews for Constitutional Law - Steven L. Emanuel - Paperback

The average rating for Constitutional Law - Steven L. Emanuel - Paperback based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-25 00:00:00 Eugene R Frazier The book I didn’t know that I needed! This is a book that’s ultimately about what it looks like to do solidarity work - to work beside and in collaboration with organizers and community members, to learn from them and see people on the ground as co-conspirators, and to undo any internalized elitist and classist assumptions we have about expertise—about whose knowledge is valued as legitimate in social change and movement work. It asks us to unlearn the idea that public interest lawyers are saviours who “help” communities, and to recognize that legal solutions are more often than not, *not* the most appropriate solutions for deep seeded social issues. Lopez is a skilled storyteller — he paints incredibly rich portraits of fictitious characters and situations - nonprofit legal clinics, legal workers, law students, community members and organizers - their conversations, their journal entries, their racial backgrounds, gender, sexuality, and intergenerational family stories to teach readers about what it means to engage in rebellious lawyering — and also what it looks like when public interest lawyers merely replicate the same old power dynamics and hierarchies. As a first year law student, so much of my legal education (and extracurricular legal volunteer work) has made me deeply uncomfortable in that it has reiterated the role of lawyers as saviours without asking students to interrogate their social position, without any meaningful consideration of systems of oppression, without questioning whether we are the right people to be engaging in certain kinds of work or whether we’re trained to do so—and all in a totally depoliticized context. This book is a reminder that doing social justice work is not just about working on “social justice” issues, but rather about deeply living our politics — about the way we move about the world and interact with community, and the assumptions we hold when we do so. I wish this book was mandatory reading for all 1L students.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-01-25 00:00:00 Randall R Wilkinson If you've ever had neighbors then you are bound to have differences in one facet or another- whether it be a tree or noise or the property line. This book details the tree and boundary issue very well. The part where I felt it fell short (only a little) was when it came to noise and animals. I know they have a book devoted to dogs but I would have liked to see even a snippet covered since dogs can be quite an issue in turning good neighbors into a war. Other that this it is a clear and concise book including references on the aspect of boundaries and trees.