Taking Back the Courts

Taking Back the Courts PDF Author: Norm Pattis
Publisher: Sutton Hart Press
ISBN: 9780981988856
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Taking Back the Courts A Flawed Justice System Exposed by One of America's Most Controversial and Successful Trial Lawyers, Norm Pattis, with a Forward and Preface by two other legal icons: F. Lee Bailey and Gerry Spence. In Taking Back the Courts Norm Pattis delivers a searing and keenly intelligent critique of America's justice system; an insider's account that takes no prisoners while offering many insightful and necessary remedies. Pattis blows the whistle on many of the system's maladies including: deceptive profiteering experts for hire, police-extorted confessions, morally bereft backroom plea bargaining, the demise of the jury, the sexophrenia that has addled the brains of legislators and judges packing our prisons with people far from evil and many more. Trial attorney Pattis is a provocative social philosopher writing with a pen warmed in Hell, but his case against the courts is unwaveringly wise, sober, principled, balanced and compulsively readable.

Taking Back the Courts

Taking Back the Courts PDF Author: Norm Pattis
Publisher: Sutton Hart Press
ISBN: 9780981988856
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
Taking Back the Courts A Flawed Justice System Exposed by One of America's Most Controversial and Successful Trial Lawyers, Norm Pattis, with a Forward and Preface by two other legal icons: F. Lee Bailey and Gerry Spence. In Taking Back the Courts Norm Pattis delivers a searing and keenly intelligent critique of America's justice system; an insider's account that takes no prisoners while offering many insightful and necessary remedies. Pattis blows the whistle on many of the system's maladies including: deceptive profiteering experts for hire, police-extorted confessions, morally bereft backroom plea bargaining, the demise of the jury, the sexophrenia that has addled the brains of legislators and judges packing our prisons with people far from evil and many more. Trial attorney Pattis is a provocative social philosopher writing with a pen warmed in Hell, but his case against the courts is unwaveringly wise, sober, principled, balanced and compulsively readable.

Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts

Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts PDF Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822971
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Here a leading scholar in constitutional law, Mark Tushnet, challenges hallowed American traditions of judicial review and judicial supremacy, which allow U.S. judges to invalidate "unconstitutional" governmental actions. Many people, particularly liberals, have "warm and fuzzy" feelings about judicial review. They are nervous about what might happen to unprotected constitutional provisions in the chaotic worlds of practical politics and everyday life. By examining a wide range of situations involving constitutional rights, Tushnet vigorously encourages us all to take responsibility for protecting our liberties. Guarding them is not the preserve of judges, he maintains, but a commitment of the citizenry to define itself as "We the People of the United States." The Constitution belongs to us collectively, as we act in political dialogue with each other--whether in the street, in the voting booth, or in the legislature as representatives of others. Tushnet urges that we create a "populist" constitutional law in which judicial declarations deserve no special consideration. But he warns that in so doing we must pursue reasonable interpretations of the "thin Constitution"--the fundamental American principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. A populist Constitution, he maintains, will be more effective than a document exclusively protected by the courts. Tushnet believes, for example, that the serious problems of the communist scare of the 1950s were aggravated when Senator Joseph McCarthy's opponents were lulled into inaction, believing that the judicial branch would step in and declare McCarthy's actions unconstitutional. Instead of fulfilling the expectations, the Court allowed McCarthy to continue his crusade until it was ended. Tushnet points out that in this context and in many others, errors occurred because of the existence of judicial review: neither the People nor their representatives felt empowered to enforce the Constitution because they mistakenly counted on the courts to do so. Tushnet's clarion call for a new kind of constitutional law will be essential reading for constitutional law experts, political scientists, and others interested in how and if the freedoms of the American Republic can survive into the twenty-first century.

The Federalist Society

The Federalist Society PDF Author: Michael Avery
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 082650339X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
Over the last thirty years, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies has grown from a small group of disaffected conservative law students into an organization with extraordinary influence over American law and politics. Although the organization is unknown to the average citizen, this group of intellectuals has managed to monopolize the selection of federal judges, take over the Department of Justice, and control legal policy in the White House. Today the Society claims that 45,000 conservative lawyers and law students are involved in its activities. Four Supreme Court Justices--Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito--are current or former members. Every single federal judge appointed in the two Bush presidencies was either a Society member or approved by members. During the Bush years, young Federalist Society lawyers dominated the legal staffs of the Justice Department and other important government agencies. The Society has lawyer chapters in every major city in the United States and student chapters in every accredited law school. Its membership includes economic conservatives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives, and libertarians, who differ with each other on significant issues, but who cooperate in advancing a broad conservative agenda. How did this happen? How did this group of conservatives succeed in moving their theories into the mainstream of legal thought? What is the range of positions of those associated with the Federalist Society in areas of legal and political controversy? The authors survey these stances in separate chapters on • regulation of business and private property • race and gender discrimination and affirmative action • personal sexual autonomy, including abortion and gay rights • American exceptionalism and international law

The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies

The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies PDF Author: Aziz Z. Huq
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197556817
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
In The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, Aziz Z. Huq examines what happens when our constitutional rights are violated. Many people think that federal courts will step in then and provide a remedy. But for most people, and especially for the vulnerable in our society, they won't lift a finger. As Huq argues, the powerful often get quicker access to the courts and more fulsome judicial review, which shows a break from the way in which the courts were originally designed. This book shows the deep ironies of judicial independence and charts a part of getting free of its most baleful effects.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct PDF Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318737
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Weak Courts, Strong Rights

Weak Courts, Strong Rights PDF Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Unlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced--not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative legal perspective to show how creating weaker forms of judicial review may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law. Under "strong-form" judicial review, as in the United States, judicial interpretations of the constitution are binding on other branches of government. In contrast, "weak-form" review allows the legislature and executive to reject constitutional rulings by the judiciary--as long as they do so publicly. Tushnet describes how weak-form review works in Great Britain and Canada and discusses the extent to which legislatures can be expected to enforce constitutional norms on their own. With that background, he turns to social welfare rights, explaining the connection between the "state action" or "horizontal effect" doctrine and the enforcement of social welfare rights. Tushnet then draws together the analysis of weak-form review and that of social welfare rights, explaining how weak-form review could be used to enforce those rights. He demonstrates that there is a clear judicial path--not an insurmountable judicial hurdle--to better enforcement of constitutional social welfare rights.

Money and Justice

Money and Justice PDF Author: Lois G. Forer
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393303131
Category : Courts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Documents the inequities introduced into the legal system because of the heavy expenses of lengthy trials and appeals and examines the dual structure of the legal profession that underlies this situation

The Court and the World

The Court and the World PDF Author: Stephen Breyer
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101912073
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
In this original, far-reaching, and timely book, Justice Stephen Breyer examines the work of the Supreme Court of the United States in an increasingly interconnected world, a world in which all sorts of activity, both public and private—from the conduct of national security policy to the conduct of international trade—obliges the Court to understand and consider circumstances beyond America’s borders. Written with unique authority and perspective, The Court and the World reveals an emergent reality few Americans observe directly but one that affects the life of every one of us. Here is an invaluable understanding for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

The Roberts Court

The Roberts Court PDF Author: Marcia Coyle
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145162753X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
For years, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has been at the center of a constitutional maelstrom. Here, the much-honored, expert Supreme Court reporter Marcia Coyle's examination of four landmark cases is "informative, insightful, clear and fair...Coyle reminds us that Supreme Court decisions matter. A lot." (Portland Oregonian). Seven minutes after President Obama put his signature to a landmark national health care insurance program, a lawyer in the office of Florida GOP attorney general Bill McCollum hit a computer key, sparking a legal challenge to the new law that would eventually reach the nation’s highest court. Health care is only the most visible and recent front in a battle over the meaning and scope of the US Constitution. The battleground is the United States Supreme Court, and one of the most skilled, insightful, and trenchant of its observers takes us close up to watch it in action. Marcia Coyle’s brilliant inside analysis of the High Court captures four landmark decisions—concerning health care, money in elections, guns at home, and race in schools. Coyle examines how those cases began and how they exposed the great divides among the justices, such as the originalists versus the pragmatists on guns and the Second Amendment, and corporate speech versus human speech in the controversial Citizens United case. Most dramatically, her reporting shows how dedicated conservative lawyers and groups have strategized to find cases and crafted them to bring up the judicial road to the Supreme Court with an eye on a receptive conservative majority. The Roberts Court offers a ringside seat to the struggle to lay down the law of the land.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers PDF Author: Alexander Hamilton
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1528785878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.