How Rights Went Wrong

Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart

By: Jamal Greene

Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson

Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PUBLISHERS PROSE AWARD FINALIST | “Essential and fresh and vital . . . It is the argument of this important book that until Americans can reimagine rights, there is no path forward, and there is, especially, no way to get race right. No peace, no justice.”—from the foreword by Jill Lepore, New York Times best-selling author of These Truths: A History of the United States

An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how our approach to rights is dividing America, and shows how we can build a better system of justice.

You have the right to remain silent—and the right to free speech. The right to worship, and to doubt. The right to be free from discrimination, and to hate. The right to life, and the right to own a gun.

Rights are a sacred part of American identity. Yet they also are the source of some of our greatest divisions. We believe that holding a right means getting a judge to let us do whatever the right protects. And judges, for their part, seem unable to imagine two rights coexisting—reducing the law to winners and losers. The resulting system of legal absolutism distorts our law, debases our politics, and exacerbates our differences rather than helping to bridge them.

As renowned legal scholar Jamal Greene argues, we need a different approach—and in How Rights Went Wrong, he proposes one that the Founders would have approved. They preferred to leave rights to legislatures and juries, not judges, he explains. Only because of the Founders’ original sin of racial discrimination—and subsequent missteps by the Supreme Court—did courts gain such outsized power over Americans’ rights. In this paradigm-shifting account, Greene forces listeners to rethink the relationship between constitutional law and political dysfunction and shows how we can recover America’s original vision of rights, while updating them to confront the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Audiobook read by Ryan Vincent Anderson.

©2021 Jamal Greene (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

A different way to look at rights.

This book gave me a new framework for understanding the nature of today’s hot-button issues. The underlying wisdom: legitimate rights can be in conflict with one another. Adopting this perspective opens the door to de-escalation and thoughtful political compromise.

Excellent & Thought Provoking

This is a must read for all who are interested in the law and its application.

A New Take

As someone who has changed his own legal philosophy a couple of time (from natural law to positivism and back again), I can say that Greene’s take is a breath of fresh air. I’m not sure how the profession or the judiciary in particular will take to it, but what is clear is that if his students do, it could have long-lasting, profound and positive consequences on rights’ theory.

Frankly this is a “must read” for students of law as well as for seasoned jurists.

Trenchant and valuable

In "How Rights Went Wrong," Jamal Greene offers a critique of American "rights obsession" and suggests that, rather than a few "strong" rights that trump all others, our courts, and our society as a whole, should recognize many more competing rights that must be balanced to serve the requirements of justice. I think he makes a compelling case.

Good take on the US legal system

I’ve often had a feeling that something was fishy with the US legal system: fights often seemed to be about the wrong thing (Gay cake anyone?). This book gave me a foundation to understand what the problem really is.

I don’t see it being addressed anytime soon, but very much enjoyed the listen.

Garbage

Naive perspective that sees rights as a contest between conservative and progressive perspectives. It makes poor generalizations about both and speaks about it as if there’s some sort of alternative use for the courts in the debate. The premise is stupid.

A compelling read but an unconvincing thesis.

Greene writes a compelling narrative, and his thesis is provocative and important. The further one delves into the book, though, the clearer it is that that thesis has collapsed under its own weight. On the one hand, Greene seems to treat “constitutional” as synonymous with “dignifying” or “worthy.” That something be “constitutional” is thus a moral imperative. On the other hand, by treating “constitutional” interpretation as nothing more than a matter of weighing societal values, it is difficult to see the benefit of a “constitution” at all. Perhaps more pressingly, the insistence against drawing bright constitutional lines results in an argument that rests on vague prescriptions (“Courts ought to wrestle with facts!”) and question-begging, extra-textual moralisms (“It is absurd that the Constitution protects X but not Y.”) that are of little help to a court wrestling with a difficult question. We are left with “rights” that are simultaneously everything and nothing, and little real guidance in defining where those rights end and begin.