The American University law professor offers a guide for activists, lawyers, public officials, and citizens that identifies innovative use of American legal ideas to pursue equality and promote fairness, justice, and free speech. "A path-breaking account of how Americans have used innovative legal measures to overcome injustice--and an indispensable guide to pursuing equality in our time. Equality is easy to grasp in theory but often hard to achieve...

"The evolution of the battle for true equality in America seen through the men, ideas, and politics behind the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed at the end of the Civil War. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood in front of a crowd in Rochester, New York, and asked, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" The audience had invited him to speak on the day celebrating freedom, and had expected him to offer a hopeful message about America;...