The Great Dissents of the "lone Dissenter"

The Great Dissents of the Author: Jesse W. Carter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781594608100
Category : Dissenting opinions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jesse W. Carter served as a justice on the California Supreme Court from 1939-1959, where he was known as "The Lone Dissenter" because he wrote so many solo dissents. Many of these opinions were in passionate defense of civil rights, civil liberties, and the rights of labor, criminal defendants, and personal injury victims. Several of the cases were reversed by the United States Supreme Court, or by later decisions of the California Supreme Court, adopting Justice Carter's reasoning. This book combines essays on several of those dissents, written by faculty and friends of Golden Gate University School of Law, where Carter earned his law degree in 1913, as well as an essay on the role of dissenting opinions by another great dissenter, Justice William Brennan. "Jesse Carter's position on the frontier of legal change is clearly discernible, and quite remarkable... Shortly before Carter's death in 1959, he expressed the hope that a 'hundred years after I am dead and forgotten, men will be moving to the measure of my thought.' I wouldn't want to best against it." -- Joseph R. Grodin, Associate Justice (Ret.), California Supreme Court "Jesse Carter's life would be unimaginable in this century. He was born in a log cabin, had only a few years of formal education, yet rose to Justice of the highest court in California, where he showed unlimited courage and unparalleled confidence in his own ideas, though most were far ahead of his time. It's a fascinating story of a true western character--a legal page turner." -- Barbara Babcock, Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, Stanford Law School, author of Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (forthcoming 2010; Stanford U. Press)

The Great Dissents of the "lone Dissenter"

The Great Dissents of the Author: Jesse W. Carter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781594608100
Category : Dissenting opinions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jesse W. Carter served as a justice on the California Supreme Court from 1939-1959, where he was known as "The Lone Dissenter" because he wrote so many solo dissents. Many of these opinions were in passionate defense of civil rights, civil liberties, and the rights of labor, criminal defendants, and personal injury victims. Several of the cases were reversed by the United States Supreme Court, or by later decisions of the California Supreme Court, adopting Justice Carter's reasoning. This book combines essays on several of those dissents, written by faculty and friends of Golden Gate University School of Law, where Carter earned his law degree in 1913, as well as an essay on the role of dissenting opinions by another great dissenter, Justice William Brennan. "Jesse Carter's position on the frontier of legal change is clearly discernible, and quite remarkable... Shortly before Carter's death in 1959, he expressed the hope that a 'hundred years after I am dead and forgotten, men will be moving to the measure of my thought.' I wouldn't want to best against it." -- Joseph R. Grodin, Associate Justice (Ret.), California Supreme Court "Jesse Carter's life would be unimaginable in this century. He was born in a log cabin, had only a few years of formal education, yet rose to Justice of the highest court in California, where he showed unlimited courage and unparalleled confidence in his own ideas, though most were far ahead of his time. It's a fascinating story of a true western character--a legal page turner." -- Barbara Babcock, Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, Stanford Law School, author of Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (forthcoming 2010; Stanford U. Press)

The Great Dissenter

The Great Dissenter PDF Author: Peter S. Canellos
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501188216
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 624

Get Book Here

Book Description
The story of an American hero who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to help enshrine our civil rights and economic freedoms. Dissent. No one wielded this power more aggressively than John Marshall Harlan, a young union veteran from Kentucky who served on the US Supreme Court from the end of the Civil War through the Gilded Age. In the long test of time, this lone dissenter was proven right in case after case. They say history is written by the victors, but that is not Harlan's legacy: his views--not those of his fellow justices--ulitmately ended segregation and helped give us our civil rights and our economic freedoms. Derided by many as a loner and loser, he ended up being acclaimed as the nation's most courageous jurist, a man who saw the truth and justice that eluded his contemporaries. "Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," he wrote in his famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, one of many cases in which he lambasted his colleagues for denying the rights of African Americans. When the court struck down antitrust laws, Harlan called out the majority for favoring its own economic class. He did the same when the justices robbed states of their power to regulate the hours of workers and shielded the rich from the income tax. When other justices said the court was powerless to prevent racial violence, he took matters into his own hands: he made sure the Chattanooga officials who enabled a shocking lynching on a bridge over the Tennessee River were brought to justice. In this monumental biography, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Peter S. Canellos chronicles the often tortuous and inspiring process through which Supreme Courts can make and remake the law across generations. But he also shows how the courage and outlook of one man can make all the difference. Why did Harlan see things differently? Because his life was different, He grew up alongside Robert Harlan, whom many believed to be his half brother. Born enslaved, Robert Harlan bought his freedom and became a horseracing pioneer and a force in the Republican Party. It was Robert who helped put John on the Supreme Court. At a time when many justices journey from the classroom to the bench with few stops in real life, the career of John Marshall Harlan is an illustration of the importance of personal experience in the law. And Harlan's story is also a testament to the vital necessity of dissent--and of how a flame lit in one era can light the world in another. --

Great Australian Dissents

Great Australian Dissents PDF Author: Andrew Lynch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107158532
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book identifies, analyses and celebrates the significant and influential dissenting judicial opinions in Australian legal history.

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

Get Book Here

Book Description
“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.

Scalia Dissents

Scalia Dissents PDF Author: Antonin Scalia
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596987006
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Brilliant. Colorful. Visionary. Tenacious. Witty. Since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has been described as all of these things and for good reason. He is perhaps the best-known justice on the Supreme Court today and certainly the most controversial. Yet most Americans have probably not read even one of his several hundred Supreme Court opinions. In Scalia Dissents, Kevin Ring, former counsel to the U.S. Senate's Constitution Subcommittee, lets Justice Scalia speak for himself. This volume—the first of its kind— showcases the quotable justice's take on many of today's most contentious constitutional debates. Scalia Dissentscontains over a dozen of the justice's most compelling and controversial opinions. Ring also provides helpful background on the opinions and a primer on Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy. Scalia Dissents is the perfect book for readers who love scintillating prose and penetrating insight on the most important constitutional issues of our time.

The Intricacies of Dicta and Dissent

The Intricacies of Dicta and Dissent PDF Author: Neil Duxbury
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108898815
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Get Book Here

Book Description
Common-law judgments tend to be more than merely judgments, for judges often make pronouncements that they need not have made had they kept strictly to the task in hand. Why do they do this? The Intricacies of Dicta and Dissent examines two such types of pronouncement, obiter dicta and dissenting opinions, primarily as aspects of English case law. Neil Duxbury shows that both of these phenomena have complex histories, have been put to a variety of uses, and are not amenable to being straightforwardly categorized as secondary sources of law. This innovative and unusual study casts new light on – and will prompt lawyers to pose fresh questions about – the common law tradition and the nature of judicial decision-making.

John Marshall Harlan

John Marshall Harlan PDF Author: Tinsley E. Yarbrough
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195362977
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
When David Souter was nominated by President Bush to the Supreme Court, he cited John Marshall Harlan as his model. It was an interesting choice. Admired by conservatives and deeply respected by his liberal brethren, Harlan was a man, as Justice William Brennan lamented, whose "massive scholarship" has never been fully recognized. In addition, he was the second Harlan to sit on the Court, following his grandfather--also named John Marshall Harlan. But while his grandfather was an outspoken supporter of reconstruction on a conservative court, the younger Harlan emerged as a critic of the Warren Court's liberal expansion of civil liberties. Now, in the first biography of this important but neglected jurist, Tinsley Yarbrough provides a detailed account of Harlan's life, from his privileged childhood to his retirement and death. Yarbrough examines the forces and events which shaped the Justice's jurisprudence--his early life and often complex family relationships, education at Princeton and Oxford, his work as a prosecutor during Prohibition, Republican Party activities, wartime service in the Army Air Force, and years as one of the nation's preeminent corporate lawyers (a career culminating in his defense of the du Pont brothers in the massive DuPont-GM antitrust suit). The book focuses, however, on Harlan's years on the high bench. Yarbrough weaves together discussions of the Justice's relations with his brethren, clerks, and staff, an examination of Harlan's role in the decision-making process on the Court, and an analysis of his jurisprudence. The Justice's approach to constitutional interpretation exalted precedent, deference to governmental power, and narrow decisions closely tied to case facts; but he also accepted an evolving, creative model of constitutional construction which permitted expansive readings of constitutional rights. Yarbrough's details Harlan's close relationship with Justice Frankfurter, showing how--despite their friendship and alliance--Harlan strongly marked out his own position, both personally and judicially, on the Warren and Burger courts. And he examines the substance and significance of his dissents in such famous cases as Miranda and the Pentagon Papers. Intensively researched, smoothly written, and incisively argued, Yarbrough's biography offers an absorbing account of the life and career of a great dissenter, hailed by admirers as a "lawyer's lawyer" and a "judge's judge." Coming at a time when the high court has begun to adopt many of Harlan's principles, this account provides an essential perspective on the Court, civil liberties, and a pivotal figure in the history of both.

Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education PDF Author: James T. Patterson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?

Judicial Enigma

Judicial Enigma PDF Author: Tinsley E. Yarbrough
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the decades that followed Reconstruction, the Supreme Court struck down civil rights legislation, validated Jim Crow laws, and stopped the government from regulating big business in almost any form. One justice, however, stood against the conservative trend: John Marshall Harlan. His advocacy of a color-blind Constitution in his powerful dissents established a rich legacy that was validated decades later by the Warren Court. But behind the legal opinions, the great dissenter was a complex, enigmatic, even contradictory man. In Judicial Enigma, Tinsley E. Yarbrough offers the most complete portrait we have ever had of this critical figure. He follows Harlan from antebellum Kentucky, when he was an outspoken Whig and Unionist, through his exploits as a colonel in the Civil War, to his political career before his appointment to the Court in 1877. Harlan's early life presents a fascinating contrast to his later stands on civil rights. Yarbrough shows, for example, that Harlan maintained a wary relationship with his black half-brother Robert (who rose to wealth during the California gold rush and to influence as a prominent Ohio Republican). The future justice also spouted openly racist language as he campaigned in postwar Kentucky--reflecting views he never entirely discarded. Even in later life, the man who became the Court's greatest moral force was not above using his position to escape his many creditors; he also did nothing to save his alcoholic, opium-addicted brother James from dying in a Kentucky almshouse. Yet moral force he was, and Yarbrough deftly explores his astonishing record as he dissented against a roster of decisions that are now considered a roll-call of error and injustice: Plessy vs. Ferguson (validating Jim Crow laws), Lochner vs. New York (overturning a law limiting working hours), the Sugar Trust Case (gutting the Sherman Antitrust Act), and many more. And yet, even here Harlan remained an enigma; as Yarbrough shows, he sometimes contradicted the same sentiments that have since sanctified his memory. In biographies of Justice Hugo Black, Judge Frank Johnson, J. Waties Waring, and John Marshall Harlan's grandson, the second Justice Harlan, Yarbrough has shown himself to be a gifted chronicler of the great figures of American law. In this volume, he offers the most insightful account of the man still remembered as the great dissenter.

Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence

Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence PDF Author: Ralph A. Rossum
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700623507
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the new afterword Ralph Rossum covers Antonin Scalia’s entire career and discusses the thirty-eight major opinions since the original 2006 publication, including District of Columbia v. Heller, his dissent in the Obamacare cases of NFIB v. Sebelius and King v. Burwell, his important recess appointments case of NLRB v. Noel Canning, his procedural decisions on the Fourth Amendment and the Confrontation Clause, his equal protection (racial preference) opinions, and Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation. Lionized by the right and demonized by the left, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is the high court's quintessential conservative. Witty, outspoken, often abrasive, he is widely regarded as the most controversial member of the Court. This book is the first comprehensive, reasoned, and sympathetic analysis of how Scalia has decided cases during his entire twenty-year Supreme Court tenure. Ralph Rossum focuses on Scalia's more than 600 Supreme Court opinions and dissents-carefully wrought, passionately argued, and filled with well-turned phrases-which portray him as an eloquent defender of an "original meaning" jurisprudence. He also includes analyses of Scalia's Court of Appeals opinions for the D.C. circuit, his major law review articles as a law professor and judge, and his provocative book, A Matter of Interpretation. Rossum reveals Scalia's understanding of key issues confronting today's Court, such as the separation of powers, federalism, the free speech and press and religion clauses of the First Amendment, and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. He suggests that Scalia displays such a keen interest in defending federalism that he sometimes departs from text and tradition, and reveals that he has disagreed with other justices most often in decisions involving the meaning of the First Amendment's establishment clause. He also analyzes Scalia's positions on the commerce clause and habeas corpus clause of Article I, the take care clause of Article II, the criminal procedural provisions of Amendments Four through Eight, protection of state sovereign immunity in the Eleventh Amendment, and Congress's enforcement power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The first book to fully articulate the contours of Scalia's constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence, Rossum's insightful study ultimately depicts Scalia as a principled, consistent, and intelligent textualist who is fearless and resolute, notwithstanding the controversy he often inspires.