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Rating: 
Summary: The Book is Well Written and Clearly Argued...
Review: The role of nonmarket discrimination in shaping the historical evolution of racial economic differences has long been a central issue in economic history and labor economics. In Only One Place of Redress, David E. Bernstein takes a fresh look at how labor regulations affected black economic status prior to the modern Civil Rights era. The overarching framework of the book is that of public-choice theory in the context of so-called Lochnerism. This term refers to Lochner v. New York, the famous 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision that in a relative sense limited the ability of government to regulate contracts. The operative word here is relative because even during the Lochner era (1905-37) courts routinely did permit regulation that, according to Bernstein, significantly inhibited the ability of blacks to earn a living and to accumulate wealth. Because blacks were largely disenfranchised, their ability to use the political process to block government discrimination was circumscribed......Overall, Only One Place of Redress is a mixed bag. The book is well written and clearly argued, the footnotes are extensive, and Bernstein has an impressive, if somewhat selective, command of secondary sources. These sources are used primarily to buttress points that he is making, as a lawyer would in a brief; that is, Bernstein does not engage in much source criticism, nor (with some exceptions) does he assess sources that might support alternative points of view... ...Only One Place of Redress contains a wealth of useful information about specific types of nonmarket discrimination against African Americans and a wealth of useful references to court cases and to the secondary literature. Therefore, although Bernstein himself has not measured the impact of the labor regulations under his scrutiny, scholars who want to do so will have to read his book.
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