Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921–1953. By Hart David M.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 267p. $39.95

Supreme Court's unwillingness to extend strict scrutiny to more and more groups, something the Court undoubtedly feels would expose the institution to further criticism for legislating from the bench. This has led the Court, among other things, to invent conventions such as intermediate scrutiny to cover issues related to gender discrimination and to apply differential levels of rigor to the rational basis test, a practice that the author calls "cheating" and that illustrates the incoherence and confusion generated when groups with clear histories of discrimination are denied the same level of protection as African Americans. The final section of this stimulating book discusses alternatives to the current approach. Gerstmann concludes that, since the Court cannot apply strict scrutiny to all laws, there must be a clearly defined method for differentiating among levels of scrutiny. Following the lead of J. Harvie Wilkinson ("The Supreme Court, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Three Faces of Constitutional Equality," Virginia Law Review 61 [1975]: 945-1018), Gerstmann elaborates and comments on Wilkinson's argument that issues related to who has been denied equality should be subordinated to what kind of equality has been denied. The balance of this insightful and provocative book is devoted to a critical reflection on the merits and limitations of Wilkinson's ideas, a reflection that should add to the existing scholarship on the limits of class-based equal protection jurisprudence. The Constitutional Underclass is thought provoking, insightful, and readable. That there are both legal and political problems associated with class-based equal protection is obvious. Gerstmann succeeds in elaborating the full extent of the problems, the innumerable ramifications, and the potential of alternatives to the status quo.