Classified

The nation urgently needs what David E. Bernstein here provides: a lucid explanation of the long and tangled intersection of racial classifications and the law. With the intellectual boldness and clarity that he brought to Rehabilitating Lochner, he points to a path from todays tensions to a less angry, more sophisticated future. -- George F. Will A thorough, careful, magisterial work on a subject thats both of great practical and great theoretical importance in modern American law; highly recommended. -- Eugene Volokh, Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law. Chief Justice John Roberts has called our racial sorting system a sordid business. In Classified, David Bernstein provides the sordid details. What began as a government effort to combat discrimination now serves mainly to advance political agendas and stoke racial resentment. Well-researched and clearly written, Classified explains how we got into this mess and why a rethinking of official racial and ethnic categories is long overdue. -- Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of "Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell" David E. Bernsteins excellent bookClassified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in Americaexposes the full extent of what we all should have known: When governments dispense benefits based on race and ethnicity, the conflict over which groups should receive those benefits and which individuals qualify as members of those groups will be never-ending. -- Gail Heriot, Professor of Law, University of San Diego, and Member, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights David Bernstein has written an illuminating, thoughtful, and often troubling book about the history of racial classifications in American law. This history underscores the validity of Oliver Wendell Holmess dictum that experience, rather than logic, dictates the actual development of law, for Bernstein demonstrates the extent to which the adoption of racial (or, more commonly ethnic) classifications has been responsive far more to systematic political pressures rather than the application of a coherent overarching theory. Even (or especially) supporters of affirmative action, as I ambivalently continue to be, will benefit enormously from confronting the material that Bernstein carefully presents. It truly deserves a wide readership and, just as importantly, respectful discussion. -- Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair, University of Texas Law School and author of "Wrestling with Diversity" We mock the racial-classifications schemes of the Jim Crow south, of Nazi Germany, and of Apartheid South Africa. But as David Bernstein ably demonstrates, our own racial classification system is just as risible, and no more scientific. -- Glenn Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee, founder of Instapundit.com David E. Bernstein proves ably and conclusively that the familiar legal classifications for racial and ethnic groups used by the federal and state governments, census-takers, medical regulators, racial-preference dispensers, and others are arbitrary to an extreme. -- Stuart Taylor, contributing editor, National Journal, and coauthor, "Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It"

David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, and the University of Turin. Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as intellectual history in its highest form, a fresh perspective and a cogent analysis, delightful and informative, sharp and iconoclastic, well-written and destined to be influential, and a terrific work of historical revisionism. Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. Professor Bernstein is married and has three children of mixed Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Spanish-Jewish origin. He prefers not to classify them.