Just out from Oxford University Press: With Liberty and Justice for All?: The Constitution in the Classroom, by Steven A. Steinbach, Maeva Marcus, and Robert Cohen.
With Liberty and Justice for All?: The Constitution in the Classroom is designed to help teachers and students generate analysis and debate in our nation’s classrooms about an aspect of US history that has produced intense disagreements about rights and wrongs: constitutional history. For more than two centuries, Americans have argued about what the US Constitution permits or requires (or not), and what values and ideals it enshrines (or not)—indeed, who is to be included (or not) in the very definition of “We the People.” Because the Constitution remains the framework under which the United States governs itself, American history can be told as the story of the use and misuse of the Constitution over time, from early disputes about liberty and slavery to more recent quarrels over equality and dignity. This book—which opens with a “Foreword” from the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—provides abundant resources to explore key moments of debate about the Constitution and its meaning, focusing on fundamental questions of citizenship and rights. Constitutional history is explored via succinct and probing essays by prize-winning historians—including Linda Greenhouse, Mary Sarah Bilder, Annette Gordon-Reed, Eric Foner, Sam Erman, Julie Suk, Laura Kalman, and Melissa Murray—and through lively primary sources and focused discussion questions. As this book amply demonstrates, United States history IS constitutional history.
--Dan Ernst
