Written in Stone

Sanford Levinson is Professor of Law at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author and editor of numerous books including Constitutional Faith and Interpreting Law and Literature (with Steven Mailloux).

"[W]ell-written, thought-provoking. . . . A legal scholar, Levinson quite naturally turns to the law for answers. His discussions of whether the Constitution (specifically the First and Fourteenth amendments) ‘speaks with enough clarity to invalidate the display of the Confederate battle flag or the raising of certain monuments’ is painstaking, yet clear enough for the average non-lawyer to read. And his conclusion, that the courts are (or should be) ‘quite limited in their actual power when what is at stake is the politics of cultural meaning,’ seems to me to be the right one." - The Washington Post "In Written in Stone, Sanford Levinson suggests that rather than addressing the greatest challenge facing our multicultural society-namely, how to fashion ‘unum out of the pluribus of American society’-our efforts at achieving reconciliation seem to have produced increasingly polarized pockets of unums." - The American Prospect “In Written in Stone, Levinson bravely confronts another article of constitutional faith, freedom of speech. Instead of the conventional examination of an individual’s right to speak without the interference from government, however, he looks at what protections the Bill of Rights provides for government-sanctioned speech.” - Peter Blake, Times Literary Supplement “A profound and engrossing meditation on historical memory and national commemoration. It is so skillfully composed and illustrated with such striking examples that I read it in a single sitting, like a murder mystery-except that the question here is not ‘who done it’ but ‘how do we reckon with what was done?’”-Michael Walzer, author of On Toleration “Much has been written about the controversy over public presentations of history, but rarely has the question of how to memorialize our past received the thoughtful, incisive, and fair-minded analysis provided by Sanford Levinson.”-Eric Foner, author of The Story of American Freedom “Sanford Levinson has written a wonderfully wise and informed essay on the issue of how we commemorate the past when the past keeps on changing.”-Nathan Glazer, author of We Are All Multiculturalists Now “This remarkable book addresses an issue as old as civilization and as topical as this morning’s newspaper. No reader of Levinson’s cultivated, nuanced, and balanced narrative will ever view a public monument in quite the same way.”-Norman Dorsen; President, ACLU, 1976–1991 “[W]onderfully provocative and gracefully written. . . .” - Edward T. Linenthal (Law and Social Inquiry) “Levinson has written a fascinating reflection on the transmission of cultural meaning through the use of public space. His book is both thought provoking and well written. . . . Levinson succeeds in immersing the reader in the difficult questions posed by monuments in a multicultural society-and their intractability.” - Benjamin Means (Michigan Law Review) "[T]his book is potentially a marvelous teaching assignment: brief, eminently readable, intensely interesting, and chock full of highly debatable issues whose ideal solutions are murkier than the Great Dismal Swamp. It can be used successfully in a whole array of introductory courses -and probably will."(American Studies) “In Written in Stone, Levinson bravely confronts another article of constitutional faith, freedom of speech. Instead of the conventional examination of an individual’s right to speak without the interference from government, however, he looks at what protections the Bill of Rights provides for government-sanctioned speech.” - Peter Blake (TLS) "[W]ell-written, thought-provoking. . . . A legal scholar, Levinson quite naturally turns to the law for answers. His discussions of whether the Constitution (specifically the First and Fourteenth amendments) ‘speaks with enough clarity to invalidate the display of the Confederate battle flag or the raising of certain monuments’ is painstaking, yet clear enough for the average non-lawyer to read. And his conclusion, that the courts are (or should be) ‘quite limited in their actual power when what is at stake is the politics of cultural meaning,’ seems to me to be the right one." (Washington Post) "In Written in Stone, Sanford Levinson suggests that rather than addressing the greatest challenge facing our multicultural society-namely, how to fashion ‘unum out of the pluribus of American society’-our efforts at achieving reconciliation seem to have produced increasingly polarized pockets of unums." (American Prospect)