The strongest branch of liberty: Louis Fisher reminds us that historically it has been Congress--dysfunction and all--that has most advanced our rights.

• Author: Kosar, Kevin R.
• Position: Congress: Protecting Individual Rights

Congress: Protecting Individual Rights

by Louis Fisher

University Press of Kansas, 208 pp.

Which branch of government comes to mind when you think of your rights? Many, if not most, Americans will think first of the judiciary. They might reference the Obergefell case, or Brown v. Board of Education. Some of us associate rights with the presidency and point to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation or President Obama's executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or identification. Few Americans, however, consider the legislative branch as a font of rights and a defender of liberties.

Which, as Louis Fisher's new book shows, is both a shame and historically inaccurate. Consider, for example, the plight of Lilly Ledbetter. She was a supervisor at a rubber plant for twenty years. After she retired, she filed a lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company for discrimination, because she had been paid $500 to $1,500 per month less than what her male counterpart supervisors earned at the end of her tenure. Her claim was considered by the Supreme Court under the 1964 Civil Rights Act's Title VII.

On May 29, 2007, the high court ruled against her, finding that she had not filed her claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sufficiently quickly. Ledbetter's congressional backers were quick to come to her defense. Senator Ted Kennedy promptly denounced the decision as undermining the law's intent in enacting Title VII, and Congress soon took up legislation to, as New York Representative Jerrold Nadler put it, "correct the Supreme Court." Although Republicans stymied the bill for more than a year, Ledbetter was vindicated when the new Congress enacted the bill in January 2009 and President Obama signed it into law.

Ihe Ledbetter case is not an anomaly. From the very beginning, Fisher demonstrates, our national legislature has played a critical role in recognizing and expanding Americans' rights. The very first Congress took up a slew of proposals to officially recognize certain rights, ultimately enacting those that became the Bill of Rights. Congress, not the president or the Supreme Court, also amended the Constitution to free slaves, to grant women and nonwhite adults the vote, and to decree that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Congress...