Book Review: A History of the American Constitution. by Daniel A. Farber & Suzanna Sherry.

Book review: A History of the American Constitution. By Daniel A. Farber & Suzanna Sherry. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing. 1990. Pp. xxii, 458. Reviewed by: William M. Wiecek

Book Review: A History of the American Constitution. by Daniel A. Farber & Suzanna Sherry.

Book review: A History of the American Constitution. By Daniel A. Farber & Suzanna Sherry. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing. 1990. Pp. xxii, 458. Reviewed by: William M. Wiecek

Emergence of Equality as a Constitutional Value: The First Century

Equality as a constitutional value was unprecedented when it made its appearance in 1868 in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reflected antebellum abolitionist ideals adopted hesitantly by Northern Republicans during Reconstruction, but these were incompatible with the expectations of most white Americans of the era, as well as with all previous American experiences. In this sense, equality was a revolutionary constitutional value. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the Equal Protection Clause and its embedded ideal of interracial equality to reverse the racist dicta of the Dred Scott opinion, to validate the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and to empower Congress to suppress counterrevolutionary violence aimed at the freedpeople and Unionists throughout the South. Regrettably, though, the United States Supreme Court betrayed these intentions in a series of restrictive decisions between 1873 and 1905 that had the effect of constitutionalizing the forms of apartheid and servitude that emerged in this era to subordinate African Americans

Is There a Canon of Constitutional History?

Symposium: The Canon(s) of Constitutional La

Micromechanical Properties of Injection-Molded Starch–Wood Particle Composites

The micromechanical properties of injection molded starch–wood particle composites were investigated as a function of particle content and humidity conditions. The composite materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction methods. The microhardness of the composites was shown to increase notably with the concentration of the wood particles. In addition,creep behavior under the indenter and temperature dependence were evaluated in terms of the independent contribution of the starch matrix and the wood microparticles to the hardness value. The influence of drying time on the density and weight uptake of the injection-molded composites was highlighted. The results revealed the role of the mechanism of water evaporation, showing that the dependence of water uptake and temperature was greater for the starch–wood composites than for the pure starch sample. Experiments performed during the drying process at 70°C indicated that the wood in the starch composites did not prevent water loss from the samples.Peer reviewe