Download or read book America s Unwritten Constitution written by Akhil Reed Amar and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading between the lines: America's implicit Constitution -- Heeding the deed: America's enacted Constitution -- Hearing the people: America's lived Constitution -- Confronting modern case law: America's "warrented" Constitution -- Putting precedent in its place: America's doctrinal Constitution -- Honoring the icons: America's symbolic Constitution -- "Remembering the ladies" : America's feminist Constitution -- Following Washington's lead: America's "Georgian" Constitution -- Interpreting government practices: America's institutional Constitution -- Joining the party: America's partisan Constitution -- Doing the right thing: America's conscientious Constitution -- Envisioning the future: America's unfinished Constitution -- Afterward -- Appendix: America's written Constitution.
Download or read book The Use of Foreign Precedents by Constitutional Judges written by Tania Groppi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2007 the International Association of Constitutional Law established an Interest Group on 'The Use of Foreign Precedents by Constitutional Judges' to conduct a survey of the use of foreign precedents by Supreme and Constitutional Courts in deciding constitutional cases. Its purpose was to determine - through empirical analysis employing both quantitative and qualitative indicators - the extent to which foreign case law is cited. The survey aimed to test the reliability of studies describing and reporting instances of transjudicial communication between Courts. The research also provides useful insights into the extent to which a progressive constitutional convergence may be taking place between common law and civil law traditions. The present work includes studies by scholars from African, American, Asian, European, Latin American and Oceania countries, representing jurisdictions belonging to both common law and civil law traditions, and countries employing both centralised and decentralised systems of judicial review. The results, published here for the first time, give us the best evidence yet of the existence and limits of a transnational constitutional communication between courts.
Download or read book Precedent in the United States Supreme Court written by Christopher J. Peters and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a variety of both normative and descriptive perspectives on the use of precedent by the United States Supreme Court. It brings together a diverse group of American legal scholars, some of whom have been influenced by the Segal/Spaeth "attitudinal" model and some of whom have not. The group of contributors includes legal theorists and empiricists, constitutional lawyers and legal generalists, leading authorities and up-and-coming scholars. The book addresses questions such as how the Court establishes durable precedent, how the Court decides to overrule precedent, the effects of precedent on case selection, the scope of constitutional precedent, the influence of concurrences and dissents, and the normative foundations of constitutional precedent. Most of these questions have been addressed by the Court itself only obliquely, if at all. The volume will be valuable to readers both in the United States and abroad, particularly in light of ongoing debates over the role of precedent in civil-law nations and emerging legal systems.
Download or read book Settled Versus Right written by Randy J. Kozel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the theoretical nuances and practical implications of how judges use precedent.
Download or read book Precedents and Case Based Reasoning in the European Court of Justice written by Marc Jacob and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marc Jacob analyses in depth the most important justificatory and decision-making tool of one of the world's most powerful courts.
Download or read book The Politics of Precedent on the U S Supreme Court written by Thomas G. Hansford and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Harris Truck Lines Inc V Cherry Meat Packers Inc written by and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Power of Precedent written by Michael J. Gerhardt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author connects the vast social science data and legal scholarship to provide a wide-ranging assessment of precedent. He outlines the major issues in the continuing debates on the significance of precedent and evenly considers all sides.
Download or read book The Law of Judicial Precedent written by Bryan A. Garner and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Law of Judicial Precedent is the first hornbook-style treatise on the doctrine of precedent in more than a century. It is the product of 13 distinguished coauthors, 12 of whom are appellate judges whose professional work requires them to deal with precedents daily. Together with their editor and coauthor, Bryan A. Garner, the judges have thoroughly researched and explored the many intricacies of the doctrine as it guides the work of American lawyers and judges. The treatise is organized into nine major topics, comprising 93 blackletter sections that elucidate all the major doctrines relating to how past decisions guide future ones in our common-law system. The authors' goal was to make the book theoretically sound, historically illuminating, and relentlessly practical. The breadth and depth of research involved in producing the book will be immediately apparent to anyone who browses its pages and glances over the footnotes: it would have been all but impossible for any single author to canvass the literature so comprehensively and then distill the concepts so cohesively into a single authoritative volume. More than 2,500 illustrative cases discussed or cited in the text illuminate the points covered in each section and demonstrate the law's development over several centuries. The cases are explained in a clear, commonsense way, making the book accessible to anyone seeking to understand the role of precedents in American law. Never before have so many eminent coauthors produced a single lawbook without signed sections, but instead writing with a single voice. Whether you are a judge, a lawyer, a law student, or even a nonlawyer curious about how our legal system works, you're sure to find enlightening, helpful, and sometimes surprising insights into our system of justice.
Download or read book Untrodden Ground written by Harold H. Bruff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines constitutional innovations related to executive power made by each of the nation's forty-four presidents.
Download or read book Great Cases in Constitutional Law written by Robert P. George and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavery, segregation, abortion, workers' rights, the power of the courts. These issues have been at the heart of the greatest constitutional controversies in American history. And in this concise and thought-provoking volume, some of today's most distinguished legal scholars and commentators explain for a general audience how five landmark Supreme Court cases centered on those controversies shaped the country's destiny and continue to affect us even now. The book is a profound exploration of the Supreme Court's importance to America's social and political life. It is also, as many of the contributors show, an intriguing reflection of what some have seen as an important trend in legal scholarship away from an uncritical belief in the essentially benign nature of judicial power. Robert George opens with an illuminating survey of the themes that unite and divide the five cases. Other contributors then examine each case in detail through a lively commentary-and-response format. Mark Tushnet and Jeremy Waldron exchange views on Marbury v. Madison, the pivotal 1803 case that established the power of the courts to invalidate legislation. Cass Sunstein and James McPherson discuss Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the notorious case that confirmed the rights of slaveowners, declared that black people could not be American citizens, and is often seen as a cause of the Civil War. Hadley Arkes and Donald Drakeman explore the legacy of Lochner v. New York (1905), a case that ushered in decades of judicial hostility to social welfare laws. Earl Maltz and Walter Murphy assess Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954), the famous case that ended racial segregation in public schools. Finally, Jean Bethke Elshtain and George Will tackle Roe v. Wade (1973), still a flashpoint a quarter of a century later in the debate over abortion. While some of the contributors show sympathy for strong judicial interventions on social issues, many across the ideological spectrum are sharply critical of judicial activism. A compelling introduction to the greatest cases in U.S. constitutional law, this is also an enlightening glimpse of the state of the art in American legal scholarship.
Download or read book The Constrained Court written by Michael A. Bailey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-22 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? The Constrained Court combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman show how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, Bailey and Maltzman document that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The authors find considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, Bailey and Maltzman show that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. The Constrained Court shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.
Download or read book Constitutional Originalism written by Robert W. Bennett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems of constitutional interpretation have many faces, but much of the contemporary discussion has focused on what has come to be called "originalism." The core of originalism is the belief that fidelity to the original understanding of the Constitution should constrain contemporary judges. As originalist thinking has evolved, it has become clear that there is a family of originalist theories, some emphasizing the intent of the framers, while others focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. This idea has enjoyed a modern resurgence, in good part in reaction to the assumption of more sweeping power by the judiciary, operating in the name of constitutional interpretation. Those arguing for a "living Constitution" that keeps up with a changing world and changing values have resisted originalism. This difference in legal philosophy and jurisprudence has, since the 1970s, spilled over into party politics and the partisan wrangling over court appointments from appellate courts to the Supreme Court. In Constitutional Originalism, Robert W. Bennett and Lawrence B. Solum elucidate the two sides of this debate and mediate between them in order to separate differences that are real from those that are only apparent. In a thorough exploration of the range of contemporary views on originalism, the authors articulate and defend sharply contrasting positions. Solum brings learning from the philosophy of language to his argument in favor of originalism, and Bennett highlights interpretational problems in the dispute-resolution context, describing instances in which a living Constitution is a more feasible and productive position. The book explores those contrasting positions, to be sure, but also uncovers important points of agreement for the interpretational enterprise. This provocative and absorbing book ends with a bibliographic essay that points to landmark works in the field and helps lay readers and students orient themselves within the literature of the debate.
Download or read book The Supreme Court the Constitution and William Rehnquist written by Steven T. Seitz and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution at a level sufficiently general to guide lawmaking while avoiding great detail. This four-page document has guided the United States of America for more than two centuries. The Supreme Court has parsed the document into clauses, which plaintiffs and defendants invoke in cases or controversies before the Court. Some, like the Interstate Commerce Clause, are central to the survival of a government of multiple sovereignties. The practice of observing case precedents allows orderly development of the law and consistent direction to the lower courts. The Court itself claimed the final power of judicial review, despite efforts to the contrary by the executive and legislative branches of the national government and the state supreme courts. The Court then limited its own awesome power through a series of self-imposed rules of justiciability. These rules set the conditions under which the Court may exercise the extraordinary final power of judicial review. Some of these self-imposed limits are prudential, some logical, and some inviting periodic revision. This book examines the detailed unfolding of several Constitutional clauses and the rules of justiciability. For each clause and each rule of justiciability, the book begins with the brilliant foundations laid by Chief Justice John Marshall, then to the anti-Federalist era, the Civil War, the dominance of laissez faire and social Darwinism, the Great Depression redirection, the civil rights era, and finally the often-hapless efforts of Chief Justice Rehnquist.
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by David A. Strauss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that the theory of an evolving, "living" Constitution effectively "rendered the Constitution useless." He wanted a "dead Constitution," he joked, arguing it must be interpreted as the framers originally understood it. In The Living Constitution, leading constitutional scholar David Strauss forcefully argues against the claims of Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, and other "originalists," explaining in clear, jargon-free English how the Constitution can sensibly evolve, without falling into the anything-goes flexibility caricatured by opponents. The living Constitution is not an out-of-touch liberal theory, Strauss further shows, but a mainstream tradition of American jurisprudence--a common-law approach to the Constitution, rooted in the written document but also based on precedent. Each generation has contributed precedents that guide and confine judicial rulings, yet allow us to meet the demands of today, not force us to follow the commands of the long-dead Founders. Strauss explores how judicial decisions adapted the Constitution's text (and contradicted original intent) to produce some of our most profound accomplishments: the end of racial segregation, the expansion of women's rights, and the freedom of speech. By contrast, originalism suffers from fatal flaws: the impossibility of truly divining original intent, the difficulty of adapting eighteenth-century understandings to the modern world, and the pointlessness of chaining ourselves to decisions made centuries ago. David Strauss is one of our leading authorities on Constitutional law--one with practical knowledge as well, having served as Assistant Solicitor General of the United States and argued eighteen cases before the United States Supreme Court. Now he offers a profound new understanding of how the Constitution can remain vital to life in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book A People s Constitution written by Rohit De and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.
Download or read book Precedents Statutes and Analysis of Legal Concepts written by Scott Brewer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At least since plato and Aristotle, thinkers have pondered the relationship between philosophical arguments and the "sophistical" arguments offered by the Sophists -- who were the first professional lawyers. Judges wield substantial political power, and the justifications they offer for their decisions are a vital means by which citizens can assess the legitimacy of how that power is exercised. However, to evaluate judicial justifications requires close attention to the method of reasoning behind decisions. This new collection illuminates and explains the political and moral importance in justifying the exercise of judicial power.
