After getting the Constitution and Bill of Rights in place, Irons draws out the human dramas involved as individuals contend for their rights. He believes that the Constitution is a flexible document within which the justices have wide-ranging discretion, along with an obligation, to interpret the fundamental law to promote the dignity of the individual. This review proceeds on the assumption that a viable history of the Court could be written by focusing largely on human rights cases dealing with race, class, and gender, by highlighting the litigants involved in the key cases, and by taking such an expansive view of the Court's proper role. Granting this much, Irons's treatment still is disappointing. The book is neither well written nor well focused.
Transitions are awkward, organization is loose, and the treatment is uneven.
Cases dealing with race are abundant, but those dealing with gender and class are few in number. In regard to women, the author deals substantially only with the abortion issue. His talk of class is general, and in other areas subjects are launched and then ignored. Although scholars may differ about a case's significance, the responsible historian cannot ignore subsequent material that is highly relevant to the story he is telling. Irons's tendency to generalize gets him into trouble.