Wendy Kaminer

Wendy Kaminer is a former senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly. She also serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union.

A lawyer, social critic, and former Guggenheim Fellow, she writes about law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture. Her latest book is Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today. Other books she has written include Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety; True Love Waits: Essays and Criticism; It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture; I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions; and A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight from Equality. Kaminer's articles and reviews have appeared in many other publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and Newsweek, and her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio.

Before embarking on her writing career, Kaminer practiced law as a staff attorney in the New York Legal Aid Society and the New York City Mayor's Office.

Wendy Kaminer retains copyrights to all her articles.

Recent Articles

I Spy

Wendy KaminerDec 05, 2001

American culture thrives on contradictions. It exalts individualism yet is rife with the conformity so essential to consumerism. It preaches self-reliance and personal accountability (especially for poor people) while enriching pop psychologists who provide excuses for sins of the middle class. It nurtures feminism and encourages face-lifts.

Fear Itself

Wendy KaminerNov 16, 2001

Terrorists enjoyed a symbolic victory when Congress shut down on October 18
to check the premises for anthrax--but both the House and Senate have seemed
increasingly irrelevant anyway since the September 11 kamikaze attacks. The Bush
administration, not Congress, is responsible for new counterterrorism legislation
that includes breathtaking expansions of federal-law-enforcement power, like the
authority to conduct secret searches of your home or office in an ordinary
criminal investigation.

The War on High Schools

Wendy KaminerNov 14, 2001

High school gave me my first lessons in bureaucracy: Rules were meant to be rigidly applied, not questioned; power was meant to be abused by petty functionaries. I don't mean to malign the entire faculty of my school. It included some very good teachers who encouraged curiosity and provocation and never lost their sense of humor. Because of them, high school also offered opportunities for self-expression and contained rebellion.

When Congress Plays Doctor

Wendy KaminerNov 14, 2001

When HMOs deny life-saving care to their patients, members of Congress fulminate. Recently, 275 of them, including 29 Republicans, voted for a patients' bill of rights. "Deny American citizens effective, life-saving treatments or palliatives for pain?" I imagine them saying indignantly to the HMOs. "That's our job."

Parochial Schools and the Court

Wendy KaminerNov 14, 2001

Although it is frequently attacked as an elitist institution with no regard for the public will, the Supreme Court is hardly immune to cultural and political trends. Justices are, after all, appointed by presidents with particular ideological agendas, shaped partly by polls. Once they ascend to the bench, a few appointees may surprise and disappoint their political patrons, but many do not. So, at least indirectly, the political preferences of voters wield considerable influence on the Court.

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Wendy Kaminer

Recent Articles

I Spy

Fear Itself

The War on High Schools

When Congress Plays Doctor

Parochial Schools and the Court

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