The main point of this book is that Tinker v. Des Moines arose out of the need for a precedent that wisely balanced the rights of free speech with social solidarity during a time of war and that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the case was a triumph of First Amendment rights over societal apprehension of public displays of dissenting opinions. John W. Johnson validates this position by detailing the major players and events of the trial as well as the social and political climate of the United States that propagated the events that led to the trial, the trial, and the rulings in all three courts.

Tinker v. Des Moines is a milestone case in not only student rights, but First Amendment rights in general. It began in 1965 when a group of public school students decided to wear black armbands to school in mourning for the soldiers killed in the Vietnam War and in general protest of the war. When three students, Christopher Eckhardt, John Tinker, and Mary Beth Tinker were suspended for wearing the armbands, an Illinois Civil Liberties Union lawyer was consulted to take the case before the courts to judge the constitutionality of the school board imposing unreasonable rules that violated the student’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

The book gives much description to the Eckhardt, the Tinkers, and both of their families, to help the reader understand the political motivation that sparked these young activists to challenge authority with the objective of teaching other students about different opinions about world events and asserting their constitutional rights in school. Johnson also details the court proceedings in all three courts as well as the reasons for the judges’ rulings in the final U.S. Supreme Court ruling. His investigation reveals the personal and political motives behind the arguments of both the plaintiffs and the defendant in a way that is very personal and moving, yet still provides a deeper understanding of the legal arguments of the plaintiff and the defendant. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a majority opinion in favor of the plaintiffs that reversed and remanded the rulings of the lower courts. The author considers this ruling to be a great stride in the endeavor to secure constitutional rights for students.

Johnson’s views on the significance of not only the ruling in the case, but the soundness of the plaintiff’s arguments are justified through his fundamental reasoning, but he did not offer enough formal legal analysis of case law to satisfy a scholarly study of the constitutional arguments at issue.

Johnson develops his ideas with both primary and secondary sources, including book studies of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, 1960s and 1970s law reviews, official reports from newspapers and journals, Supreme Court opinions, transcribed oral arguments, working files of the lawyers on the case, trial briefs, ICLU collection papers on the case, and interviews. As a result, the reader feels immersed in the initial whirlwind of events that generated the case and then the many years of court processes that finally led to the decision.

The book could improve upon it’s analysis of Constitutional law and First Amendment law, but it seems that Johnson was attempting to reach a broader audience with his more personal and historical account of the characters and events. One of the most exciting segments of the novel was the relation of the long and arduous process of creating, filing, responding, and orally arguing the case before the United States Supreme Court that led to the long-awaited yet still pertinent ruling.

The book The Struggle for Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s is a significant contribution to the general public’s understanding of one of the most imperative cases to ensure the rights of students the freedom of expression in the classroom with most of the same liberties as they would outside of the classroom. Johnson’s account of the social and political history that inspired and was affected by this trial as well as the characters of the major players was a deep exploration of American values during the 1960s and the triumph of our ruling document, the Constitution.