A People's Charter: The Pursuit of Rights in America.

• Author: Shiffrin, Steven

A People's Charter: The Pursuit of Rights in America. James MacGregor Burns, Stewart Burns. Knopf $30. This book's publication coincides with the 200th anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights, and that might arouse a certain degree of skepticism. Books of this genre tend toward patriotic banality ("Despite our flaws, what a sweet land of liberty"), alternately focusing on the founding of the Bill of Rights, lavishing praise on James Madison, and then rushing to embrace the Warren court (with homage paid to Justices Holmes and Brandeis along the way). Such books tell a tale of unending, enlightened progress, a tale increasingly hard to reconcile with the cast of characters now presiding in black robes on the Rehnquist court.

But A People k Charter is not banal; it is not about the Supreme Court; it is not even about the Bill of Rights. A Peoplek Charter is about grassroots agitation and struggle, not legal documents. Judicial figures and political leaders do not go unmentioned, but their role is in most cases incidental. Instead, the book focuses on "historic rights movements in which all participants are engaged in forging a dynamic, evolving people's charter of rights."

Thus, while the Burnses mention James Madison's participation in passing the Bill of Rights, they give most of the credit to the "mainly hinterland people" who forced the Federalists to accept rights as the fundamental issue. President Wilson's crucial support for the women's suffrage amendment is noted, but his support-given kicking and screaming against his will-was the culmination of more than a half century of agitation by the women's movement. Senator Wagner's devotion to labor's associational rights goes unquestioned, but "it was the struggles and sacrifices of millions of workers reaching back at least a century that had set the agenda and terms of the debate" over the Wagner Act.

The authors provide a well-written overview of these and other historic struggles. In particular, they explore the liberation efforts of feminists; African Americans from abolitionist Frederick Douglass ("the preeminent American rights advocate of the 19th century") to today's civil rights leaders; and laborers who battled for rights of association and a 10-then 8-hour day. Although much of the book concentrates on these three groups, there is more, including the Jews' escape from Egyptian slavery, the struggles and intellectual history leading to the Declaration of Independence...