Next week, on March 18, we will accept the Henry Edgerton Civil Liberties Special Recognition Award at the National Capital Area ACLU’s 2010 Bill of Rights Awards Dinner. While making some brief remarks about how gratified we are, we will take the occasion to reflect on one of the many books that we have promoted over the years that frame a historical event crucial to the affirmation of the Constitution and civil rights.  This new book, SUPREME POWER: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court, by Jeff Shesol (Norton, $27.95) is a wonderful reminder about the precarious existence of civil rights, even during the administrations of presidents who seemed to embrace them.

 Photograph by Arlene Polangin

In this new book, Shesol tells a sad and intricate story about how President Roosevelt came to underhandedly attempt to manipulate the number of seats on the Court in an effort to defeat the conservative majority.  It was a shoddy and duplicitous maneuver.  Roosevelt went to great lengths to denigrate the court, tastelessly suggesting that the Gridiron Club was a more appropriate court of appeal.  Shosel assesses Roosevelt’s court-packing as the work of an arrogant and delusional president, the same president that we continue to revere because of his avowed dedication to civil rights.  Did that make him a bad president?  Not at all.  Like all great men, he had his own pockets of hypocrisy, and his surreptitious attempt to pack the Court with liberal justices painfully reminds us of the endless need to remain vigilant about our constitutional freedoms even in seemingly safe political environments.

PASSOVER BEGINS
Passover begins March 29 this year. Click here to see and buy some of our selections of Haggadahs and related books.

Wednesday, April 14, 7 p.m.
at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
(Metro: Gallery Place - Chinatown)
YANN MARTEL
BEATRICE AND VIRGIL (Spiegel & Grau, $24)
Martel won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for The Life of Pi, his story of a boy and a tiger adrift at sea. His new novel, featuring a donkey, a howler monkey, and an enigmatic taxidermist, is an equally whimsical and philosophical consideration of truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

Click here for two free admission tickets with the purchase of BEATRICE AND VIRGIL or click here to purchase a single $12 ticket without the book.