Civil Rights and Liberties

Reviewed by Sara Benesh, Associate Professor and Chair, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on 1/2/25

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This is a great start -- the text includes an excellent set of cases related to free speech and press, free religion and establishment, the second amendment, privacy, equal protection, and voting rights -- but it leaves out criminal procedure cases (4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendment cases) and so doesn't quite cover all that is usually covered in a Civil Rights and Civil Liberties course. Adding that coverage would make the text even more useful. I'd also love to see more coverage of dissenting opinions. As I scrolled through the text, I noticed very little inclusion of those often important separate opinions.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

My initial skims of some important cases suggest that the excerpting is generally well done.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Foundational cases are wisely included, as are very important current cases, where necessary. New cases will quite easily be able to be inserted in relevant places in the text as they are decided.

Clarity rating: 5

This doesn't necessarily apply here given that the book is entirely comprised of excerpts -- the Supreme Court justices' language is not always clear, but that's neither the fault of the authors nor the editor. Excerpting the decisions has likely much improved clarity of the majority opinions.

Consistency rating: 5

The text appears to treat cases chronologically within subject area and subject areas are arranged reasonably, even when I would have arranged them differently.

Modularity rating: 5

The nature of a case book lends itself well to being able to skip around as needed.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization makes sense even though it is not the way my course is organized.

Interface rating: 5

The Table of Contents is particularly useful given how I'll use the text in my course as I'll have students skip around in the text to find the excerpts for the cases I'll cover.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Again, given that this case book consists fully of excerpts of Supreme Court decisions, I'd be surprised if there were grammatical errors and if there were any, they would likely come not from the editors but from the Court.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

Not really applicable, given that there is no original content here. Some of the older cases will indeed have some likely insensitivities, but those are instructive and so I would imagine they are still included (and hope they would be).

Comments

Excerpting cases is extremely time consuming and using excerpts rather than the full text of cases is very useful in an undergraduate course on Supreme Court decisions and so the editors have done us a great service. I would love to see more inclusion of separate opinions in future iterations, along with those criminal procedure cases.