Making the Bill of Rights Relevant to Young Readers

New York Times

04-07-2025

REBELS, ROBBERS AND RADICALS: The Story of the Bill of Rights, by Teri Kanefield; illustrated by Kelly Malka
Nearly daily, the front page of The New York Times is filled with the clash between an expansive executive branch and the responses of an embattled judiciary. Yet for many young people the most compelling current events are the swells and trends of the digital world. In 'Rebels, Robbers and Radicals: The Story of the Bill of Rights,' Teri Kanefield sets out to reveal to those screenagers the architecture of laws and beliefs that undergirds this nation. Can she engage her readers and prove that a 234-year-old document matters to them? Yes.
Kanefield is a lawyer and an accomplished children's nonfiction author. When her editor suggested a book on the Bill of Rights she found the prospect daunting, until she 'hit on the idea of presenting the material the way the law is presented to law students — through actual court cases.' For each of the 10 amendments, she shares individuals' personal stories and legal conflicts, and shows how they shape or reflect the terms and principles of the amendment.
Kanefield recognizes the 'paradox of liberty,' quoting the Lyndon B. Johnson-era assistant attorney general Roger Wilkins on framers who 'celebrated freedom while stealing the substance of life from the people they 'owned.'' Her book looks at the Bill of Rights in the context of real people with complex motives in challenging times.
The Bill of Rights was created to address the founders' determination to restrain the reach and power of a central government, as well as states' rights advocates' demand that such a bill apply only to federal law — leaving states 'free to enact any laws they pleased, including laws that allowed enslavement.' Why is it, then, that the rights enshrined in the bill are applied so broadly today? Kanefield describes the shift, after the Civil War, when the expansive 14th Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing 'equal protection of the laws' throughout the country. As she demonstrates, this incorporation of the original bill into a national framework was truly a 'second founding' of the nation.
From high-concept legal theory, Kanefield moves quickly to the amendments. She approaches the First Amendment and free speech through the Peter Zenger case in colonial New York — when British libel law did not allow truth as a defense. Just as a manager will be thrown out of a baseball game for arguing balls and strikes even if the umpire is indeed blind, Zenger was on trial in 1735 for defaming a corrupt official by printing a newspaper article that said he was corrupt. The local jury ignored the law and took his side — as does the later ratified First Amendment. What, then, are the limits on speech?
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