Yesterday was a positively Yoshinous day, if I may coin a phrase. Russell Robinson of UCLA Law School posted on SSRN his review of Kenji Yoshino’s book Covering, now out in paperback. Titled Uncovering Covering, the review is forthcoming in the Northwestern University Law Review and is well worth a read. Robinson argues that despite Yoshino’s rhetoric suggesting that covering is a phenomenon that affects everyone — as Yoshino says, “everyone covers” — “[w]hen one strips away the rhetoric, . . . we can see that Yoshino offers those excluded from the civil rights paradigm no new rights or protections.” He also discusses two aspects of covering that he thinks Yoshino neglects: covering demands imposed by minority groups, and self-covering. He also compares Yoshino’s work with the “identity work” scholarship of Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati. In keeping with Yoshino’s own style, Robinson’s review is both an excellent piece of analysis and a richly written, often autobiographical work. Download it while it’s etc., etc.
The same day brought to my mailbox the April issue of the Michigan Law Review, the always compulsively readable book review issue, which contains my own review of Covering. Great minds, or whatever kind of minds Robinson and I have, obviously think alike: my review is titled Uncovering Identity. (The link is to a slightly longer version than the final version; I’ll post the final version on SSRN one of these days.) Note to law review editors: If your reviews titled “Uncovering Uncovering,” or “Uncovering Yoshino,” or “Uncovering Equality,” haven’t quite gone to press yet, consider a title change. Professor Robinson and I have a number of points in common in our respective critiques of Yoshino, although our focuses are somewhat different, and those differences are actually reflected in our titles: Robinson unpacks and extends the concept of covering itself, while I focus a little more on vexing questions of identity that underlie Yoshino’s project. No need to choose between us: read both reviews!
Posted by Paul Horwitz on April 10, 2007 at 08:30 AM