Review by Choice Review
In this work Bedi (Dartmouth College) takes on traditional equal protection scrutiny used by the courts in the US, by which governmental actions that discriminate between or among individuals are subject to strict (used in classifications based on race), intermediate (sex classifications), or rational (everything else) levels of scrutiny. Bedi argues that this tripartite distinction suffers from four problems: it undermines a robust notion of individuality; it exacerbates the countermajoritarian difficulty; it perversely affirms the racist beliefs it seeks to counter; and it is too subjective in its language, thus allowing judges to use their ideological discretion in interpreting terms such as "compelling" or "legitimate." Instead, Bedi proffers an alternative analysis that does not use levels of scrutiny but that strikes down government action based on animus toward a group or groups and discrimination based on the idea that a particular orthodoxy or way of life is better than another. This work will appeal to both scholars of public law and political theory. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections. M. W. Bowers University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
