Books, Arts & Manners: Minority Rules

The Tyranny of the Majority, by Lani Guinier (Free Press, 320 pp., $22.95)

WHAT IS most remarkable about this book—a collection of scholarly writings by the woman nominated and un-nominated last year by President Clinton to be his chief civil-rights enforcer—is not its preference for group voting rights over individual voting rights, its rejection of geographically based legislative representation for race-based representation, its assertion that minorities are entitled to proportionate legislative as well as electoral results, or even its general lack of comfort with majority rule as an organizing principle of society. Rather, it is that these writings purport to set forth an interpretation of a statute enacted by the Congress of the United States. Miss Guinier’s approach has been “mandated by the Congress.”

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Steven Markman

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The Tyranny of the Majority, by Lani Guinier (Free Press, 320 pp., $22.95)

WHAT IS most remarkable about this book—a collection of scholarly writings by the woman nominated and un-nominated last year by President Clinton to be his chief civil-rights enforcer—is not its preference for group voting rights over individual voting rights, its rejection of geographically based legislative representation for race-based representation, its assertion that minorities are entitled to proportionate legislative as well as electoral results, or even its general lack of comfort with majority rule as an organizing principle of society. Rather, it is that these writings purport to set forth an interpretation of a statute enacted by the Congress of the United States. Miss Guinier’s approach has been “mandated by the Congress.”