The Supreme Court and Legal Change

The Supreme Court and Legal Change PDF Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807861294
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
The authors analyze abortion and death penalty decisions by the Supreme Court and argue that they provide prime examples of abrupt legal change. After proposing that the strength of legal arguments has at least as much impact on Court decisions as do public opinion and justices' political beliefs, they focus on the way litigators propel certain issues onto the Court's agenda and seek to persuade the justices to affect legal change.

The Supreme Court and Legal Change

The Supreme Court and Legal Change PDF Author: Lee Epstein
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807861294
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
The authors analyze abortion and death penalty decisions by the Supreme Court and argue that they provide prime examples of abrupt legal change. After proposing that the strength of legal arguments has at least as much impact on Court decisions as do public opinion and justices' political beliefs, they focus on the way litigators propel certain issues onto the Court's agenda and seek to persuade the justices to affect legal change.

Injustices

Injustices PDF Author: Ian Millhiser
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568585853
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Now with a new epilogue-- an unprecedented and unwavering history of the Supreme Court showing how its decisions have consistently favored the moneyed and powerful. Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy. Nor is the modern Court a vast improvement, with its incursions on voting rights and its willingness to place elections for sale. In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, Ian Millhiser tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the everyday people who have suffered the most from it. America ratified three constitutional amendments to provide equal rights to freed slaves, but the justices spent thirty years largely dismantling these amendments. Then they spent the next forty years rewriting them into a shield for the wealthy and the powerful. In the Warren era and the few years following it, progressive justices restored the Constitution's promises of equality, free speech, and fair justice for the accused. But, Millhiser contends, that was an historic accident. Indeed, if it weren't for several unpredictable events, Brown v. Board of Education could have gone the other way. In Injustices, Millhiser argues that the Supreme Court has seized power for itself that rightfully belongs to the people's elected representatives, and has bent the arc of American history away from justice.

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change PDF Author: Paul M. Collins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107039703
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This book demonstrates that the hearings to confirm Supreme Court nominees are in fact a democratic forum for the discussion and ratification of constitutional change.

The Agenda

The Agenda PDF Author: Ian Millhiser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781734420760
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States. Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right--its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws.

The Case Against the Supreme Court

The Case Against the Supreme Court PDF Author: Erwin Chemerinsky
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0143128000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Both historically and in the present, the Supreme Court has largely been a failure In this devastating book, Erwin Chemerinsky—“one of the shining lights of legal academia” (The New York Times)—shows how, case by case, for over two centuries, the hallowed Court has been far more likely to uphold government abuses of power than to stop them. Drawing on a wealth of rulings, some famous, others little known, he reviews the Supreme Court’s historic failures in key areas, including the refusal to protect minorities, the upholding of gender discrimination, and the neglect of the Constitution in times of crisis, from World War I through 9/11. No one is better suited to make this case than Chemerinsky. He has studied, taught, and practiced constitutional law for thirty years and has argued before the Supreme Court. With passion and eloquence, Chemerinsky advocates reforms that could make the system work better, and he challenges us to think more critically about the nature of the Court and the fallible men and women who sit on it.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania PDF Author: John J. Hare
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271081996
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Established in 1684, over a century before the Commonwealth, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court is the oldest appellate court in North America. This balanced, comprehensive history of the Court examines over three centuries of legal proceedings and cases before the body, the controversies and conflicts with which it dealt, and the impact of its decisions and of the case law its justices created Introduced by constitutional scholar Ken Gormley, this volume describes the Supreme Court’s structure and powers and focuses at length on the Court’s work in deciding notable cases of constitutional law, civil rights, torts, criminal law, labor law, and administrative law. Through three sections, “The Structure and Powers of the Supreme Court,” “Decisional Law of the Supreme Court,” and “Reporting Supreme Court Decisions,” the contributors address the many ways in which the Court and its justices have shaped life and law in Pennsylvania and beyond. They consider how it has adjudicated new and complex issues arising from some of the most notable events and tragedies in American history, including the struggle for religious liberty in colonial Pennsylvania, the Revolutionary War, slavery, the Johnstown Flood, the Homestead Steel Strike and other labor conflicts, both World Wars, and, more recently, the dramatic rise of criminal procedural rights and the expansion of tort law. Featuring an afterword by Chief Justice Saylor and essays by leading jurists, deans, law and history professors, and practicing attorneys, this fair-minded assessment of the Court is destined to become a criterion volume for lawmakers, scholars, and anyone interested in legal history in the Keystone State and the United States.

The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court

The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court PDF Author: Thomas G. Hansford
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691188041
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court offers an insightful and provocative analysis of the Supreme Court's most important task--shaping the law. Thomas Hansford and James Spriggs analyze a key aspect of legal change: the Court's interpretation or treatment of the precedents it has set in the past. Court decisions do not just resolve immediate disputes; they also set broader precedent. The meaning and scope of a precedent, however, can change significantly as the Court revisits it in future cases. The authors contend that these interpretations are driven by an interaction between policy goals and variations in the legal authoritativeness of precedent. From this premise, they build an explanation of the legal interpretation of precedent that yields novel predictions about the nature and timing of legal change. Hansford and Spriggs test their hypotheses by examining how the Court has interpreted the precedents it set between 1946 and 1999. This analysis provides compelling support for their argument, and demonstrates that the justices' ideological goals and the role of precedent are inextricably linked. The two prevailing, yet contradictory, views of precedent--that it acts either solely as a constraint, or as a "cloak" that never actually influences the Court--are incorrect. This book shows that while precedent can operate as a constraint on the justices' decisions, it also represents an opportunity to foster preferred societal outcomes.

One Vote Away

One Vote Away PDF Author: Ted Cruz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684511356
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
** WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER **USA TODAY BESTSELLER ** PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BESTSELLER ** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ** With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left would have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made America a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing our most precious constitutional rights. As a Supreme Court clerk, solicitor general of Texas, and private litigator, Ted Cruz played a key role in some of the most important legal cases of the past two decades. In One Vote Away, you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by the narrowest of margins. One vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith. One vote will determine whether your children enjoy their full inheritance as American citizens. God may endow us with "certain unalienable rights," but whether we enjoy them depends on nine judges—the "high priests" who have the last say in our system of government. Drawing back the curtain of their temple, Senator Cruz reveals the struggles, arguments, and strife that have shaped the fate of those rights. No one who reads One Vote Away can ever again take a single seat on the Supreme Court for granted.

The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court PDF Author: Tony Mauro
Publisher: Union Square + ORM
ISBN: 1435164237
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
A concise, informative guide to the twenty most momentous Court rulings in American history, including excerpts from the written decisions and dissents. The legislative branch of government creates laws, and the executive branch signs and enforces them. But how does America make sure these laws don’t run afoul of the Constitution? That responsibility lies with the final arbiters: the nine justices of the Supreme Court. Every year, thousands of contentious cases are submitted to the court; only about eighty of them are heard. Out of those cases, many are remembered only by the people directly involved. But over the years, many cases heard by the Supreme Court have gone on to affect the lives of many, or even all, American citizens. In The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions, veteran court reporter Tony Mauro picks out the twenty most momentous Supreme Court cases in United States history. In his reviews, from Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case that first affirmed the Supreme Court’s status as the country’s final legal arbiter, to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage, Mauro summarizes each case and includes cogent summaries of the justices’ decisions, as well as notable dissents. From a journalist noted by the New York Times for “explaining complex legal issues to laymen without sacrificing accuracy and subtlety,” The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions serves as your quick, concise, and informative guide to one of the most important, and sometimes least-understood, institutions in the nation.

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.