At times, the latest addition to Holt's American Empire Project reads like a left-wing version of William Rehnquist's All The Laws but One
(1998). Irons, a Supreme Court historian, picks up on many of the same cases that the Chief Justice examined, but where Rehnquist saw wartime necessity in curtailing civil liberties, Irons sees a pattern of presidential overreaching that federal judges have neglected to check. A chapter on the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War is a particularly forceful example of Irons's ability to build a persuasive argument rooted in constitutional case law. He also significantly expands the scope of the discussion beyond Rehnquist to include military actions launched by presidents without a formal declaration of war by Congress, including the recent invasion of Iraq and the treatment of suspected terrorists and other detainees. Here, Irons occasionally undercuts himself with inflammatory rhetoric, claiming, for example, that the first President Bush started the Gulf War as a public relations stunt. Similarly, his otherwise strong elaboration of the executive branch's Theodore Roosevelt–initiated seizing of power contains assertive "empire" moments that make the legalistic arguments a tougher sell than they need to be. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra
. (Aug. 5)
