Johnson v. McIntosh and its impact offers a comprehensive historical and legal overview of Native land rights since the European discovery of the New World. Watson sets the case in rich historical context. After tracing Anglo-American views of Native land rights to their European roots, Watson explains how speculative ventures in Native lands affected not only Indian peoples themselves but the causes and outcomes of the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and ratification of the Articles of Confederation. He then focuses on the transactions at issue in Johnson between the Illinois and Piankeshaw Indians, who sold their homelands, and the future shareholders of the United Illinois and Wabash Land Companies.
Affirmative action continues to be one of the most hotly contested issues in America. Volatile and divisive, the debates over its legitimacy have inspired a number of "reverse discrimination" suits in the federal courts. Like the landmark 1978 Bakke decision, most of these have focused on preferential treatment given racial minorities. In Johnson v. Santa Clara, however, the central issue was gender, not race discrimination, and the Supreme Court's decision in that case marked a resounding victory for women in the work force. Johnson v. Santa Clara involved two people who in 1980 competed for a dispatcher position with the transportation department of Santa Clara County, California. Paul Johnson had more experience and slightly higher test scores, but Diane Joyce was given the job based on affirmative action. An irate Johnson sued the county and won, only to have the decision reversed in appellate court. That reversal was subsequently upheld in the Supreme Court's 1987 decision, reaffirming that it was legitimate for employers to consider gender in hiring. Preeminent legal historian Melvin Urofsky proves an exemplary guide through the complexities of this case as he takes us from the workplace through the various levels of our federal court system. Balancing the particulars of the case with an overview of constitutional law and judicial process, he creates a model legal history that is both appealing and enlightening for the non-scholar. Urofsky is especially good at highlighting the fundamental human drama of this case and shows how Johnson and Joyce were simply ordinary people, each with valid reasons for their actions, but both ultimately caught up in legal and social issues that reached well beyond their own lives. Affirmative Action on Trial pointedly addresses the issue of sex discrimination and the broader controversy over the place of affirmative action in American society. The latter continues to generate headlines, like those that followed the 1996 Supreme Court decision to let stand a lower-court ruling that race cannot be used as a determination for admission to academic programs. More recently, several states have even taken steps to end affirmative action altogether. While it's hard to tell how such actions will ultimately impact affirmative action, there's no question that the rulings in cases like Johnson v. Santa Clara will continue to guide and influence the debates both inside and outside the courtroom.
Reproductive justice theory made real through re-imagining critical cases addressing pregnancy, parenting, and the law's treatment of marginalized women.
U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.
A “persuasive . . . heartfelt and vividly written” call to counter systemic racism and build national solidarity in America (Publishers Weekly). The American Promise enshrined in our Constitution states that all men and women are inherently equal. And yet racism continues to corrode our society. If we cannot overcome it, Theodore Johnson argues, the promise that made America unique on Earth will have died. In When the Stars Begin to Fall, Johnson presents a compelling blueprint for the kind of national solidarity necessary to mitigate racism. Weaving together history, personal memories, and his family’s multi-generational experiences with racism, Johnson posits that solutions can be found in the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America. Understanding that racism is a structural crime of the state, he argues that overcoming it requires us to recognize that a color-conscious society—not a color-blind one—is the true fulfillment of the American Promise. Fueled by Johnson’s ultimate faith in the American project, grounded in his family’s longstanding optimism and his own military service, When the Stars Begin to Fall is an urgent call to undertake the process of overcoming what has long seemed intractable.
