IN OUR DEFENSE: The Bill of Rights in Action, by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, William Morrow and Co. Inc., 430 pages, $22.95.

For many, the Bill of Rights is an obscure idea penned two centuries ago on a now tender square of parchment. Few people can name all 10 parts of the bill, and even fewer realize how that aged document affects daily life.

The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee to a speedy trial, and, of course, the First Amendment’s right to free speech — some or all of these often enter our lives at one point. However, these rights often are taken for granted, a habit authors Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy seek to change in their book, “In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action.”

Alderman and Kennedy, daughter of the late president, decided to tackle the subject while at Columbia University law school. Their research took them on a cross-country tour enjoyed by the reader, and their work illustrates how the Bill of Rights has affected common Americans.

The first case, Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kansas City, is one of the book’s most interesting. Like most fascinating court cases, Missouri Knights pits one constitutional right against another.

In August 1987, the KKK sought to obtain air time on Kansas City’s public-access cable television channel, a request challenged by the local black community and the cable company itself.

While the Klan said that its right to air the TV show was like any other form of free speech, the opposition maintained the First Amendment allows some form of restriction, such as when that speech can be used to incite racial tension, which already had been a problem in Kansas City.

Whose right to free speech outweighed the other? Did not the cable company have the right to control what appears under its name?

Nearly three years after the case began, the first episode of “Klansas City Cable” aired on April 3, 1990.

It is with such cases the authors take a somewhat dry subject and make it interesting for the lay reader.

And, as the Bill of Rights nears its 200th birthday on Dec. 15, reading “In Our Defense” is perhaps an ideal way to mark the anniversary.

John Ripley is a reporter on the NEWS city desk.