A concise and readable guide to the first--and still most important--case that tackled the constitutionality of prayer in public schools. The decision evoked an enormous outcry from a wide spectrum of society concerned about protecting religious practice in America and curbing an activist Supreme Court that many perceived to be too liberal and out-of-control.

GBS LOCAL 07-30-2002 $20.00.

An engrossing story of one of the landmark cases in First Amendment history

The Battle Plan equips and encourages you to see prayer as your first wave of attack in every undertaking. Think of this book as a strategic guide to engaging with God, expecting His answers, and enlarging your vision of what He can do through someone like you.

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) gives us an engaging and alarming book that aims to vindicate the rights of public school stu­dents, which have so often been undermined by the Supreme Court in recent decades. Judicial decisions assessing the constitutional rights of students in the nation’s public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. From racial segregation to un­authorized immigration, from antiwar protests to compul­sory flag salutes, from economic inequality to teacher-led prayer—these are but a few of the cultural anxieties dividing American society that the Supreme Court has addressed in elementary and secondary schools. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education and illuminates contemporary disputes that continue to fracture the nation. Justin Driver maintains that since the 1970s the Supreme Court has regularly abdicated its responsibility for protecting students’ constitutional rights and risked trans­forming public schools into Constitution-free zones. Students deriving lessons about citizenship from the Court’s decisions in recent decades would conclude that the following actions taken by educators pass constitutional muster: inflicting severe corporal punishment on students without any proce­dural protections, searching students and their possessions without probable cause in bids to uncover violations of school rules, random drug testing of students who are not suspected of wrongdoing, and suppressing student speech for the view­point it espouses. Taking their cue from such decisions, lower courts have upheld a wide array of dubious school actions, including degrading strip searches, repressive dress codes, draconian “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies, and severe restrictions on off-campus speech. Driver surveys this legal landscape with eloquence, highlights the gripping personal narratives behind landmark clashes, and warns that the repeated failure to honor students’ rights threatens our basic constitutional order. This magiste­rial book will make it impossible to view American schools—or America itself—in the same way again.

The Third Disestablishment examines the formative period in the development of church-state law and the rise and decline of church-state separation as a legal construct and a cultural value.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title Florida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for General Nonfiction ?The scope of the book is impressive. [Benowitz] covers every major rightist issue, including the Vietnam War and the Equal Rights Amendment. . . . Highly recommended.??Choice ?Each chapter deals with a separate set of issues, from progressive education and the teaching of sex education, to mental health issues, patriotism, the Vietnam War, the New Left, and conservative opposition to the equal rights amendment. . . . A synthesis of material found nowhere else in a single book.??Journal of American History ?Offers a cohesive picture of the issues and the people who pushed the Right?s agenda, and how both changed over time. . . . Enhances our understanding of how and why the new Right cultivated support in the late 1970s and early 1980s.??Journal of Southern History ?Maintains the wild complexity of right-wing activism. . . . Benowitz manages to incorporate this many-headed activism without simplifying it or compartmentalizing it.??History of Education Quarterly ?An important contribution to the study of this moment of political change, and shows just how significant a role women in the grassroots have played and continue to play.??Indiana Magazine of History In the mid-twentieth century, a grassroots movement of women sought to shape the ideologies of the baby boomer youth. Foremothers of twenty-first century activists such as Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter, these rightist women deeply influenced the path of U.S. politics after World War II. In Challenge and Change, June Benowitz draws on activists? letters to presidents, editors, and one another, allowing these women to speak for themselves. Benowitz examines the issues that stirred them to action?education, health, desegregation, moral corruption, war, patriotism, and the Equal Rights Amendment?and explores the growth of the right-wing women?s movement.