Title: "Beyond the Burning Cross: The First Amendment and th Landmark R.A.V. Case"
Author: Edward J. Cleary
Publisher: Random House
Length, price: 301 pages, $25
In June 1990, a black family found a small cross burning on the lawn of their house in a working-class neighborhood of St. Paul, Minn. Many residents were shocked, and after 17-year-old Robert Anthony Viktora (identified only as R.A.V. because of his age) was arrested, they were pleased that he would be prosecuted under a city ordinance making it a misdemeanor to display a symbol "one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender."
Edward J. Cleary, a St. Paul attorney specializing in criminal defense, was himself angered at the cross-burning . . . but soon angry in a different way, when he discovered, as young Viktora's court-appointed lawyer, that he would be almost alone in his battle to have the ordinance declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it grossly infringed the First Amendment. "Beyond the Burning Cross" is Mr. Cleary's account of his unpopular and controversial case, one he would win resoundingly with a unanimous decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, and if the writing in the book is only workmanlike, it illuminates well the legal complexities and political conflicts of much constitutional litigation.
Mr. Cleary settles some old scores, but the book's overriding point is well taken: Liberals often shoot their own cause in the foot by promulgating "politically correct" ideas and legislation.