How Rights Went Wrong Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart

Jamal Greene, Jill Lepore

eBook - 2021

An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how our approach to rights is dividing America, and how we can build a better system of justice: "Incisive." —Publishers WeeklyFinalist, American Association of Publishers Prose AwardYou have the right to remain silent—and the right to free speech. The right to worship, and to doubt. The right to be free from discrimination, and to hate. The right to life, and the right to own a gun.Rights are a sacred part of American identity. Yet they're also the source of some of our greatest divisions. We believe that holding a right means getting a judge to let us do whatever the right protects. And judges, for their part, seem unable to imagine two rights coexisting—reducing the law to wi...nners and losers. The resulting system of legal absolutism distorts our law, debases our politics, and exacerbates our differences rather than helping to bridge them.As renowned legal scholar Jamal Greene argues, we need a... more