[.ca] The American Language of Rights (ISBN 0521616212)

Smart and Substantive:
Richard Primus is a scholar's scholar. The description indicates not esotericism, as in "writer's writer," but exemplarity, as in "gentleman's gentleman." Indeed (though perhaps this strays to the mere possessive) sitting down with his latest book is rather like placing oneself in the hands of Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred. One may be sure that whatever difficulties arise will be handled with a competence, professionalism, and elegance matched by few and surpassed by none. Whether urbane sophisticate or crusader for justice (and especially if both), the reader will find The American Language of Rights an essential resource, distinguished by both the value of its original contributions and the charity and sophistication of its survey of extant literature. Primus is one of very few writers who, when he canvasses others' views, reliably produces art. In this book he shows again why Primus inter pares is, if not an oxymoron, surely a rare sight indeed.

Right on.:
I initially thought that this book would succeed only in pointing out the painfully obvious. I like to read such drivel while I exercise because it makes me angry, thereby elevating my heart rate. To my surprise, the book was so engrossing that I stepped from the Nordic Track and nearly completed it in the sauna. The ideas and historical analyses are fresh and convincing. I actually feel as if I learned something important from this book. Highest recommendation.

A vivid, rigorous work on rights and their meaning in Americ:
Dr. Primus has pulled off a rare feat. He has written a book that is both intellectually exciting and accessible to the curious general reader. Now, The American Langauge of Rights is not a book to flip through on the Nordic Track, or to read on the Jersey Shore this Labor Day weekend. It is, after all, a serious work of scholarship that is sophisticated in its method, and that ambitiously dives head first into some of the most serious academic debates of our time. But the book also opens a wide window into how "We the People" have talked about politics and rights and our national community over the last 200 or so years. It's as if an Oxford don spent a year in Indiana, learning about American politics and history without ever forgetting what he knew about political theory. Our world is indeed a narrow bridge. While this book will not make us less afraid while walking on it, it should give us all--academics and general readers allike--a fuller, richer sense of why it is the way it is.

"Right" as a politically engaged word:
The first third of this book was about the meaning of "rights" in the American political context. I found it dry; that is probably a matter of taste, and the willingness of the reader to focus on the writer's abstractions and observations. The balance of the book discussed the use of the word "rights" in the context of political and historical events in the United States. The author makes a strong case that the creation of constitutional rights was usually in response to contemporary political positioning. For example, a party may have a political advantage in pressing for the extension of the right to vote in terms of the current balance of political power, and that ends up working itself out as a change to the constitution. The full implications of that consitutional change, though, have longer term and different consequences than the short-term political consequences that may have been primary for the original legislative actors. Overall, I very much enjoyed reading the book, learned about the political context of some American constitutional changes, and got an interesting perspective on political and legislative forces and the political use of the word rights.