On the Limits of the Law is Stephens Halpern's compelling examination of the legal struggle to control the enforcement of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act-the historic provision prohibiting racial discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance. Although the provision appeared to have immense power to fight racial inequality in education, Halpern argues, attacking the problem through legal rights and litigation distorted our understanding of educational inequality based on race and limited the remedies used to address it.;Halpern also shows how this focus on legal recourse led to the expansion of the civil rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s to include groups such as Hispanics, women, the elderly, and the handicapped. As the injuries experienced by these different groups were increasingly portrayed as comparable to - if not indistinguishable from - those suffered by black Americans, the later came to be viewed as one of many historically mistreated groups. In that change, Halpern concludes, the nation lost its sense of the unparalleled place, the virulent force, and the unique historical evil of racial discrimination.
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