The Words That Made Us

The Words That Made Us PDF Author: Akhil Reed Amar
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096360
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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Book Description
A history of the American Constitution's formative decades from a preeminent legal scholar When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch? In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.

The Words That Made Us

The Words That Made Us PDF Author: Akhil Reed Amar
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096360
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 816

Get Book Here

Book Description
A history of the American Constitution's formative decades from a preeminent legal scholar When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch? In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.

Between Truth and Power

Between Truth and Power PDF Author: Julie E. Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190246693
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
This work explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. It argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is changing in fundamental ways.

The Case for Same-sex Marriage

The Case for Same-sex Marriage PDF Author: William N. Eskridge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Current Events
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Third, same-sex marriage would help civilize America. A civilized polity assures equality for all its citizens. Without full access to the institutions of civic life, gays and lesbians cannot be full participants in the American experience. Gays and lesbians love their country, and have contributed in every way to its flourishing.

51 Imperfect Solutions

51 Imperfect Solutions PDF Author: Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190866063
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
When we think of constitutional law, we invariably think of the United States Supreme Court and the federal court system. Yet much of our constitutional law is not made at the federal level. In 51 Imperfect Solutions, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton argues that American Constitutional Law should account for the role of the state courts and state constitutions, together with the federal courts and the federal constitution, in protecting individual liberties. The book tells four stories that arise in four different areas of constitutional law: equal protection; criminal procedure; privacy; and free speech and free exercise of religion. Traditional accounts of these bedrock debates about the relationship of the individual to the state focus on decisions of the United States Supreme Court. But these explanations tell just part of the story. The book corrects this omission by looking at each issue-and some others as well-through the lens of many constitutions, not one constitution; of many courts, not one court; and of all American judges, not federal or state judges. Taken together, the stories reveal a remarkably complex, nuanced, ever-changing federalist system, one that ought to make lawyers and litigants pause before reflexively assuming that the United States Supreme Court alone has all of the answers to the most vexing constitutional questions. If there is a central conviction of the book, it's that an underappreciation of state constitutional law has hurt state and federal law and has undermined the appropriate balance between state and federal courts in protecting individual liberty. In trying to correct this imbalance, the book also offers several ideas for reform.

Our Undemocratic Constitution

Our Undemocratic Constitution PDF Author: Sanford Levinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195365577
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Levinson here argues that too many of our Constitution's provisions promote either unjust or ineffective government. Under the existing blueprint, we can neither rid ourselves of incompetent presidents nor assure continuity of government following catastrophic attacks. Worse, our Constitution is the most difficult to amend or update in the world. Levinson boldly challenges the Americans to undertake a long overdue public discussion on how they might best reform this most hallowed document and construct a constitution adequate to our democratic values.

The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law

The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law PDF Author: Roger K. Newman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300113005
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
This book is the first to gather in a single volume concise biographies of the most eminent men and women in the history of American law. Encompassing a wide range of individuals who have devised, replenished, expounded, and explained law, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law presents succinct and lively entries devoted to more than 700 subjects selected for their significant and lasting influence on American law. Casting a wide net, editor Roger K. Newman includes individuals from around the country, from colonial times to the present, encompassing the spectrum of ideologies from left-wing to right, and including a diversity of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Entries are devoted to the living and dead, the famous and infamous, many who upheld the law and some who broke it. Supreme Court justices, private practice lawyers, presidents, professors, journalists, philosophers, novelists, prosecutors, and others--the individuals in the volume are as diverse as the nation itself. Entries written by close to 600 expert contributors outline basic biographical facts on their subjects, offer well-chosen anecdotes and incidents to reveal accomplishments, and include brief bibliographies. Readers will turn to this dictionary as an authoritative and useful resource, but they will also discover a volume that delights and entertains. Listed in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law: John Ashcroft Robert H. Bork Bill Clinton Ruth Bader Ginsburg Patrick Henry J. Edgar Hoover James Madison Thurgood Marshall Sandra Day O'Connor Janet Reno Franklin D. Roosevelt Julius and Ethel Rosenberg John T. Scopes O. J. Simpson Alexis de Tocqueville Scott Turow And more than 700 others

Representing Justice

Representing Justice PDF Author: Judith Resnik
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300110960
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 719

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Book Description
A remnant of the Renaissance : the transnational iconography of justice -- Civic space, the public square, and good governance -- Obedience : the judge as the loyal servant of the state -- Of eyes and ostriches -- Why eyes? : color, blindness, and impartiality -- Representations and abstractions : identity, politics, and rights -- From seventeenth-century town halls to twentieth-century courts -- A building and litigation boom in Twentieth-Century federal courts -- Late Twentieth-Century United States courts : monumentality, security, and eclectic imagery -- Monuments to the present and museums of the past : national courts (and prisons) -- Constructing regional rights -- Multi-jurisdictional premises : from peace to crimes -- From "rites" to "rights" -- Courts : in and out of sight, site, and cite -- An iconography for democratic adjudication.

The Ideological Origins of American Federalism

The Ideological Origins of American Federalism PDF Author: Alison L. LaCroix
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674048867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
In this book, the author traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue.

Yale Law School and the Sixties

Yale Law School and the Sixties PDF Author: Laura Kalman
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876887
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
The development of the modern Yale Law School is deeply intertwined with the story of a group of students in the 1960s who worked to unlock democratic visions of law and social change that they associated with Yale's past and with the social climate in which they lived. During a charged moment in the history of the United States, activists challenged senior professors, and the resulting clash pitted young against old in a very human story. By demanding changes in admissions, curriculum, grading, and law practice, Laura Kalman argues, these students transformed Yale Law School and the future of American legal education. Inspired by Yale's legal realists of the 1930s, Yale law students between 1967 and 1970 spawned a movement that celebrated participatory democracy, black power, feminism, and the counterculture. After these students left, the repercussions hobbled the school for years. Senior law professors decided against retaining six junior scholars who had witnessed their conflict with the students in the early 1970s, shifted the school's academic focus from sociology to economics, and steered clear of critical legal studies. Ironically, explains Kalman, students of the 1960s helped to create a culture of timidity until an imaginative dean in the 1980s tapped into and domesticated the spirit of the sixties, helping to make Yale's current celebrity possible.

The Antitrust Paradox

The Antitrust Paradox PDF Author: Robert Bork
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781736089712
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.