Melvin V. United States of America

Melvin V. United States of America PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Dissent and the Supreme Court

Dissent and the Supreme Court PDF Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 110187063X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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“Highly illuminating ... for anyone interested in the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the American democracy, lawyer and layperson alike." —The Los Angeles Review of Books In his major work, acclaimed historian and judicial authority Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court’s long history. Constitutional dialogue is one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. The Supreme Court has interpreted the meaning of the Constitution, acknowledged that the Court’s majority opinions have not always been right, and initiated a critical discourse about what a particular decision should mean before fashioning subsequent decisions—largely through the power of dissent. Urofsky shows how the practice grew slowly but steadily, beginning with the infamous and now overturned case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) during which Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion upheld slavery and ending with the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Dissent on the court and off, Urofsky argues in this major work, has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so.

National Insecurity

National Insecurity PDF Author: Melvin A. Goodman
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872865959
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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"Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military, and now, in National Insecurity, he tells us what we must do to change the way the system works, and how to fix it. Goodman is not only telling us how to save wasted billions—he is also telling us how to save ourselves."—Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker Upon leaving the White House in 1961, President Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the dangers of a "military industrial complex," and was clearly worried about the destabilizing effects of a national economy based on outsized investments in military spending. As more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the United States is spending more on the military than ever before. What are the consequences and what can be done? Melvin A. Goodman, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA, brings peerless authority to his argument that US military spending is indeed making Americans poorer and less secure while undermining our political standing in the world. Drawing from his firsthand experience with war planners and intelligence strategists, Goodman offers an insider's critique of the US military economy from President's Eisenhower's farewell warning to Barack Obama's expansion of the military's power. He outlines a much needed vision for how to alter our military policy, practices and spending in order to better position the United States globally and enhance prosperity and security at home. Melvin A. Goodman is the Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. A former professor of international security at the National War College and an intelligence adviser to strategic disarmament talks in the 1970s, he is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed The Failure of Intelligence.

Affirmative Action on Trial

Affirmative Action on Trial PDF Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Affirmative action continues to be one of the most hotly contested issues in America. Volatile and divisive, the debates over its legitimacy have inspired a number of "reverse discrimination" suits in the federal courts. Like the landmark 1978 Bakke decision, most of these have focused on preferential treatment given racial minorities. In Johnson v. Santa Clara, however, the central issue was gender, not race discrimination, and the Supreme Court's decision in that case marked a resounding victory for women in the work force. Johnson v. Santa Clara involved two people who in 1980 competed for a dispatcher position with the transportation department of Santa Clara County, California. Paul Johnson had more experience and slightly higher test scores, but Diane Joyce was given the job based on affirmative action. An irate Johnson sued the county and won, only to have the decision reversed in appellate court. That reversal was subsequently upheld in the Supreme Court's 1987 decision, reaffirming that it was legitimate for employers to consider gender in hiring. Preeminent legal historian Melvin Urofsky proves an exemplary guide through the complexities of this case as he takes us from the workplace through the various levels of our federal court system. Balancing the particulars of the case with an overview of constitutional law and judicial process, he creates a model legal history that is both appealing and enlightening for the non-scholar. Urofsky is especially good at highlighting the fundamental human drama of this case and shows how Johnson and Joyce were simply ordinary people, each with valid reasons for their actions, but both ultimately caught up in legal and social issues that reached well beyond their own lives. Affirmative Action on Trial pointedly addresses the issue of sex discrimination and the broader controversy over the place of affirmative action in American society. The latter continues to generate headlines, like those that followed the 1996 Supreme Court decision to let stand a lower-court ruling that race cannot be used as a determination for admission to academic programs. More recently, several states have even taken steps to end affirmative action altogether. While it's hard to tell how such actions will ultimately impact affirmative action, there's no question that the rulings in cases like Johnson v. Santa Clara will continue to guide and influence the debates both inside and outside the courtroom.

Melvin V. United States of America

Melvin V. United States of America PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Louis D. Brandeis

Louis D. Brandeis PDF Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805211950
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 978

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As a young lawyer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Louis Brandeis, born into a family of reformers who came to the United States to escape European anti-Semitism, established the way modern law is practiced. He was an early champion of the right to privacy and pioneer the idea of pro bono work by attorneys. Brandeis invented savings bank life insurance in Massachusetts and was a driving force in the development of the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Reserve Act, and the law establishing the Federal Trade Commission. Brandeis witnessed and suffered from the anti-Semitism rampant in the United States in the early twentieth century, and with the outbreak of World War I, became at age fifty-eight the head of the American Zionist movement. During the brutal six-month congressional confirmation battle that ensued when Woodrow Wilson nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1916, Brandeis was described as “a disturbing element in any gentlemen’s club.” But once on the Court, he became one of its most influential members, developing the modern jurisprudence of free speech and the doctrine of a constitutionally protected right to privacy and suggesting what became known as the doctrine of incorporation, by which the Bill of Rights came to apply to the states. In this award-winning biography, Melvin Urofsky gives us a panoramic view of Brandeis’s unprecedented impact on American society and law.

Melvin Belli

Melvin Belli PDF Author: Mark Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781569803240
Category : Lawyers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Melvin Belli was a rogue, a charmer and a rule bender in the courtroom. He led the way for many of the multimillion-dollar lawsuits we see today in the news. Known for his controversial representation of Jack Ruby, Belli pioneered legal strategies and wrote many books revealing his unconventional courtroom wisdom. He was a crusader notorious for his scandalous court cases, and won large awards for his clients often with unorthodox tactics. Dubbed King of Torts by Life Magazine, Belli represented the likes of Lana Turner, George Foreman, Mickey Cohen, and the Rolling Stones.

African American Political Thought

African American Political Thought PDF Author: Melvin L. Rogers
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022672607X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 771

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African American Political Thought offers an unprecedented philosophical history of thinkers from the African American community and African diaspora who have addressed the central issues of political life: democracy, race, violence, liberation, solidarity, and mass political action. Melvin L. Rogers and Jack Turner have brought together leading scholars to reflect on individual intellectuals from the past four centuries, developing their list with an expansive approach to political expression. The collected essays consider such figures as Martin Delany, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde, whose works are addressed by scholars such as Farah Jasmin Griffin, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Dawson, Nick Bromell, Neil Roberts, and Lawrie Balfour. While African American political thought is inextricable from the historical movement of American political thought, this volume stresses the individuality of Black thinkers, the transnational and diasporic consciousness, and how individual speakers and writers draw on various traditions simultaneously to broaden our conception of African American political ideas. This landmark volume gives us the opportunity to tap into the myriad and nuanced political theories central to Black life. In doing so, African American Political Thought: A Collected History transforms how we understand the past and future of political thinking in the West.

Supreme Decisions

Supreme Decisions PDF Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 0813347351
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Compellingly written, accessible, and interpretive, Melvin I. Urofsky's stories of major Supreme Court cases and the impact of each ruling on American constitutional law make a readable book for every student.

The Campaign Finance Cases

The Campaign Finance Cases PDF Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700629882
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Rarely does the Supreme Court reverse itself as quickly and profoundly as it did in recent campaign finance cases, with the Citizens United decision of 2010 undoing the constraints of the McCain-Feingold Act upheld in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003). And rarely have the stakes seemed so high, as billionaires vie for elected office and dark money floods political campaigns. In timely fashion, this new edition updates Melvin Urofsky’s classic study of campaign finance law, bringing his cogent analysis of the relevant statutes and court cases up to date. Urofsky explains in clear and convincing language what was—and is—at stake in the twists and turns of campaign finance laws taken up by the nation’s highest court in the past decades. Beginning with Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and moving through McConnell, Citizens United, and finally McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014), Urofsky discusses the two principles at issue in these cases: freedom of political speech, and the protection of the political process from undue influence. Conventional wisdom holds that in such cases liberals want greater restrictions and conservatives want corporations to have greater freedom to influence voters. But working from a rich store of primary sources, probing the motivations and ideas of all participants in the campaign finance legal story, Urofsky reveals a far more complex picture, one whose significance transcends simple political ideologies. In a time of controversies over political speech in the blogosphere, social media, and cable news, and claims of electoral fraud, The Campaign Finance Cases offers a much-needed, balanced account of how issues critical to American democracy figure in the adjudication of campaign finance law, and how a changing political and media landscape might alter the process.

Lethal Judgments

Lethal Judgments PDF Author: Melvin I. Urofsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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He shows how these 1997 cases relate to two other famous cases-Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Beth Cruzan-and carries the controversy up to the recent trials of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Urofsky considers the many facets of this knotty argument. He differentiates between discontinuation of medical treatment, assisted suicide, and active euthanasia, and he sensitively examines the issue's social and religious contexts to enable readers to see both sides of the dispute. He also shows that in its ruling the Supreme Court did not slam the door on the subject but left it ajar by allowing states to legislate on the matter as Oregon has already done. By treating assisted suicide simply as a legal question, observes Urofsky, we miss the real importance of the issue.