SuitabookTo Establish Justice
Patricia McKissack, Arlene Zarembka
- Reading
- Before reading, introduce liberty as an ideal rather than an automatic reality. Afterwards, compare the groups named in the description and ask where the Court appears to have advanced or denied justice.
- Themes
- The Supreme Court’s mixed civil-rights record: The book examines how the Supreme Court has affected civil rights for various groups, sometimes paving the way for justice and sometimes for discrimination. The description clearly presents the Court’s record as mixed rather than uniformly protective or harmful.
- Liberty as an unfinished ideal: The book places America’s founding idea of liberty for all alongside its failure to achieve that ideal consistently. The subject is clearly present, but the short description does not establish whether the book’s treatment is hopeful, critical or otherwise evaluative.
- Historical civil-rights struggles: The description names struggles and legal treatment involving these groups, ranging from the country’s birth to the African American civil-rights movement of the 1960s. The book is described as presenting historical and legal material about several groups and periods.
- Worth knowing
- Some readers may need support when discussing discrimination, curtailed rights and the internment of Japanese people during the Second World War. The description does not indicate the detail or tone of these accounts.