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BOOK REVIEWS

FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING

DISCRIMINATION AND THE LAW. Edited by Vern Countryman. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill. 170 pages. $5.00.

These papers were presented at a "Conference on Discrimination and the Law," at the University of Chicago Law School. Sponsored by the school and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, it convened the morning just before the assassination of President Kennedy, was postponed that afternoon, but concluded the following day.

Here we have excellent summaries of the full length papers, as well as introductory and concluding chapters by Vern Countryman, of the Harvard Law School. The papers are "Discrimination in Employment" by Vern Countryman, with critiques by Jerre S. Williams and William R. Ming; "Discrimination in Education," by Alexander M. Bickel, with critiques by John Kaplan and William Coleman; "Discrimination in Housing," by Harold Horowitz, with critiques by Francis Allen and Norman Dorsen. The essence of the floor discussions follows the critiques.

In his introduction, "The Growth of the Law," Countryman traces the evolution and interpretation of this nation's laws relating to its citizens of African origin. It is an illuminating discussion of such legal landmarks as "The Northwest Ordinance of 1787" which forbade slavery "in the territory northwest of the Ohio River' but "the rights of owners in the states to reclaim fugitive slaves were expressly reserved and only Massachusetts had at the time outlawed slavery."

He goes into the Dred Scott Case of 1857; The Emancipation Proclamation; The Black Codes; the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments; and several important Supreme Court decisions affecting the rights of Negroes such as the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 and Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896, which established the separate but

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