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Showing posts from April, 2014

The One Legal Book Everyone Should Read This Summer

wikimedia commons official portrait My household is abuzz over retired Justice John Paul Stevens' book, Six Amendments: How And Why We Should Change the Constitution. (Little, Brown & Co.) Run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore or Amazon, and plunk down the $20 or so it will take to buy it. This is a first. This is the first time a retired Supreme Court Justice has published a manifesto, if you will, on our Constitution. And in my humble opinion, this book, while short, opens a much needed dialogue on the need for Constitutional change by amendment in this county. The book is short and covers a number of topics, campaign finance, gerrymandering and perhaps the most important, and most controversial, the death penalty and the right to bear arms. Stevens would add words to the Second Amendment to read, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed." He writes: Emotional claims t