Enforcing Equality: Congress, the Constitution and the Protection of Individual Rights. By Rebecca E. Zeitlow. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 265p. $45.00.

The unit of analysis for law professors is nearly always the court decision. This holds true for legal pedagogy and scholarship in general, but it is particularly true in the area of constitutional rights. On the basis of the assumption that courts are independent of the political process and can exercise judicial review to protect “discrete and insular” minorities from the tyranny of the majority, it is assumed by many—especially those in the legal academy—that the judiciary is the best-situated governmental institution to protect individual rights under the U.S. Constitution. In Enforcing Equality, Rebecca Zeitlow joins a growing legion of law professors and political scientists interested in the “Constitution outside the Court,” and who are dubious of the so-called countermajoritarian problem, and the Court's unabated role in protecting constitutional rights.