Download or read book Constitutional Rights Moral Controversy and the Supreme Court written by Michael J. Perry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Supreme Court's proper role in adjudicating moral controversies that implicate constitutional rights.
Download or read book Human Rights in the Constitutional Law of the United States written by Michael J. Perry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-08 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period since the end of the Second World War, there has emerged what never before existed: a truly global morality. Some of that morality - the morality of human rights - has become entrenched in the constitutional law of the United States. This book explicates the morality of human rights and elaborates three internationally recognized human rights that are embedded in US constitutional law: the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment; the right to moral equality; and the right to religious and moral freedom. The implications of one or more of these rights for three great constitutional controversies - capital punishment, same-sex marriage and abortion - are discussed in-depth. Along the way, Michael J. Perry addresses the question of the proper role of the Supreme Court of the United States in adjudicating these controversies.
Download or read book Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design written by Paul Yowell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decisions courts make in constitutional rights cases pervade our political life and touch on our most basic interests and values. The spread of judicial review of legislation around the world means that courts are increasingly called on to settle matters of moral and political controversy, including assisted suicide, data privacy, anti-terrorism measures, marriage, and abortion. But doubts regarding the institutional capacities of courts for deciding such questions are growing. Judges now regularly review social science research to assess whether a law will effectively achieve its aim, and at what cost to other interests. They cite studies and statistical information from psychology, sociology, medicine, and other disciplines in which they are rarely trained. This empirical reasoning proceeds alongside open-ended moral reasoning, with judges employing terms such as equality, liberty, and autonomy, then determining what these require in concrete circumstances. This book shows that courts were not designed for this kind of moral and empirical reasoning. It argues that in comparison to legislatures, the institutional capacities of courts are deficient. Legislatures are better equipped than courts for deliberating and decision-making in regard to the kinds of factual and moral issues that arise in constitutional rights cases. The book concludes by considering the implications of comparative institutional capacity for constitutional design. Is a system of judicial review of legislation something that constitutional framers should choose to adopt? If so, in what form? For countries with systems of judicial review, practical proposals are made to remedy deficiencies in the institutional capacities of courts.
Download or read book Freedom s Law written by Ronald Dworkin and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dworkin argues that Americans have been systemically misled about what their Constitution is and how judges decide what it means. What does its abstract language mean when it is applied to the political controversies that divide Americans--about affirmative action, euthanasia, censorship, pornography, and homosexuality, for example? Is the moral reading of the Constitution--the only reading that really makes sense--really undemocratic? In this fascinating book, Dworkin discusses these and other aspects of the document.
Download or read book The United States Supreme Court s Assault on the Constitution Democracy and the Rule of Law written by Adam Lamparello and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part VII An interpretive theory that promotes federalism, separation of powers and principled judicial review -- 28 Is democracy a good thing? The arguments - and the practicalities -- 29 Foundational principles for a pro-democracy, process-oriented, and pragmatic jurisprudence -- 30 Applying the foundational principles to the "worst" Supreme Court decisions and arriving at nonideological, process-oriented, and pro-democracy outcomes -- Concluding thoughts -- Index
Download or read book Toleration and the Constitution written by David A. J. Richards and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1989-04-06 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have the issues of religious liberty, free speech and constitutional privacy come to figure so prominently in our society? What are the origins of the basic principles of our constitutional law? This work develops a general theory of constitutional interpretation based on an original synthesis of political theory, history, law, and a larger approach to the interpretation of culture. Presenting both historical and theoretical arguments in support of a theory that affirms the moral sovereignty of the people, Richards maintains that toleration, or respect for conscience and individual freedom, is the central constitutional ideal. He discusses such current topics of constitutional controversy as church-state relations, the scope of free speech, and the application of the constitutional right to privacy, to abortion, and consensual adult sexual relations.
Download or read book We the People The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court written by Michael J. Perry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several of the most divisive moral conflicts that have beset Americans in the period since World War II have been transmuted into constitutional conflicts and resolved as such. In his new book, eminent legal scholar Michael Perry evaluates the grave charge that the modern Supreme Court has engineered a "judicial usurpation of politics." In particular, Perry inquires which of several major Fourteenth Amendment conflicts--over race segregation, race-based affirmative action, sex-based discrimination, homosexuality, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide--have been resolved as they should have been. He lays the necessary groundwork for his inquiry by addressing questions of both constitutional theory and constitutional history. A clear-eyed examination of some of the perennial controversies in American life, We the People is a major contribution to modern constitutional studies.
Download or read book A Citizen s Guide to the Constitution and the Supreme Court written by Morgan Marietta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Constitution is a blueprint for a free society as well as a source of enduring conflict over how that society must be governed. The competing ways of reading our founding document shape the decisions of the Supreme Court, which acts as the final voice on constitutional questions. This breezy, concise guide explains the central conflicts that frame our constitutional controversies, written in clear non-academic language to serve as a resource for engaged citizens, both inside and outside of an academic setting. After covering the main points of conflict in constitutional law, Marietta gives readers an overview of the perspectives from the leading schools of constititional interpretation--textualism, common law constitutionalism, originalism, and living constitutionalism. He then walks through the points of conflict and competing schools of thought in the context of several landmark cases and ends with advice to readers on how to interpret constitutional issues ourselves.
Download or read book The Constitution in the Courts written by Michael J. Perry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the modern period of American constitutional law--the period since the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racially segregated public schooling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)--there has been a persistent and vigorous debate in the United States about whether the Court has merely been enforcing the Constitution or whether, instead, in the guise of enforcing the Constitution, the Court has really been usurping the legislative prerogative of making political choices about controversial issues. In this book, Professor Perry carefully disentangles and then thoughtfully addresses the various fundamental issues at the heart of the controversy: What is the argument for "judicial review"? What approach to constitutional interpretation should inform the practice of judicial review? How large or small a role should the Court play in bringing the interpreted Constitution to bear in resolving constitutional conflicts? To what extent are the Court's most controversial modern decisions--for example, decisions about racial segregation, discrimination based on sex, abortion, and homosexuality--sound; to what extent are they problematic? The Constitution in the Courts is a major contribution to one of the most fundamental controversies in modern American politics and law.
Download or read book The Supreme Court and the Idea of Constitutionalism written by Steven Kautz and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade to Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court has, over the past fifty years, assumed an increasingly controversial place in American national political life. As the recurring struggles over nominations to the Court illustrate, few questions today divide our political community more profoundly than those concerning the Court's proper role as protector of liberties and guardian of the Constitution. If the nation is today in the midst of a "culture war," the contest over the Supreme Court is certainly one of its principal battlefields. In this volume, distinguished constitutional scholars aim to move debate beyond the sound bites that divide the opposing parties to more fundamental discussions about the nature of constitutionalism. Toward this end, the volume includes chapters on the philosophical and historical origins of the idea of constitutionalism; on theories of constitutionalism in American history in particular; on the practices of constitutionalism around the globe; and on the parallel emergence of—and the persistent tensions between—constitutionalism and democracy throughout the modern world. In democracies, the primary point of having a constitution is to place some matters beyond politics and partisan contest. And yet it seems equally clear that constitutionalism of this kind results in a struggle over the meaning or proper interpretation of the constitution, a struggle that is itself deeply political. Although the volume represents a variety of viewpoints and approaches, this struggle, which is the central paradox of constitutionalism, is the ultimate theme of all the essays.
Download or read book A Global Political Morality written by Michael J. Perry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Global Political Morality, Michael J. Perry addresses several related questions in human rights theory, political theory and constitutional theory. He begins by explaining what the term 'human right' means and then elaborates and defends the morality of human rights, which is the first truly global morality in human history. Perry also pursues the implications of the morality of human rights for democratic governance and for the proper role of courts - especially the US Supreme Court - in protecting constitutionally entrenched human rights. The principal constitutional controversies discussed in the book are capital punishment, race-based affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide and abortion.
Download or read book Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States written by United States. Supreme Court and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy written by Michael J. Perry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important new work elaborates and defends an account of the political morality of liberal democracy.
Download or read book Constitutional Self Government written by Christopher L. EISGRUBER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author focuses directly on the Constitution's seemingly undemocratic features. He argues that constitutionalism is best regarded not as a constraint upon self-government, but as a crucial ingredient in a complex, non-majoritarian form of democracy.
Download or read book Corrupted by Power written by Robert Riggs and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2004-09 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the "least dangerous" branch of government. He was right then but wrong today. Since Hamilton's time the Supreme Court has become a cardinal example of Lord Acton's famous dictum: "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." It is not a corruption of bribes, or even of bad intentions, but of taking upon itself the right to alter the Constitution whenever past principles offend present preferences of five or more Justices. Corrupted by Power shows how the Constitution is repeatedly changed to mean whatever the Supreme Court wants it to mean. Precedent is followed only when past decisions support current opinions. Otherwise precedents are overruled, misrepresented or ignored. A conspicuous example is the judicial manufacture of new First Amendment rights, including rights to advocate criminal behavior, publish degrading sex and extreme violence, and advertise vice. Can the Constitution be rescued? Discover what can be done.
Download or read book Constitutional Conscience written by H. Jefferson Powell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many recent observers have accused American judges—especially Supreme Court justices—of being too driven by politics and ideology, others have argued that judges are justified in using their positions to advance personal views. Advocating a different approach—one that eschews ideology but still values personal perspective—H. Jefferson Powell makes a compelling case for the centrality of individual conscience in constitutional decision making. Powell argues that almost every controversial decision has more than one constitutionally defensible resolution. In such cases, he goes on to contend, the language and ideals of the Constitution require judges to decide in good faith, exercising what Powell calls the constitutional virtues: candor, intellectual honesty, humility about the limits of constitutional adjudication, and willingness to admit that they do not have all the answers. Constitutional Conscience concludes that the need for these qualities in judges—as well as lawyers and citizens—is implicit in our constitutional practices, and that without them judicial review would forfeit both its own integrity and the credibility of the courts themselves.
Download or read book American Constitutional Law written by Donald P. Kommers and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 1174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: iAmerican Constitutional Law Essays, Cases, and Comparative Notes is a unique casebook that encourages students and citizens of the Constitution to think critically about the fundamental principles and policies of the American constitutional order. The book has two prominent features that distinguish it from other books in the field an emphasis on the social, political and moral theory that provides meaning to constitutional law and interpretation; and a comparative perspective that situates the American experience within a world context that serves as an invaluable prism through which to illuminate the special features of our own constitutional order. While the focus of the book is entirely on American constitutional law, the book asks students to consider what, if anything, is unique in American constitutional life and what we share with other constitutional democracies. Each chapter is preceded by an introductory essay that highlights these major themes and also situates the cases in their proper historical and political context. For students in the liberal arts, as well as law students seeking a richer encounter with the multifaceted nature of the American constitutional experience, this book addresses all of their concerns.The new edition offers Updated and expanded treatment of key cases on gerrymandering and campaign finance Expanded discussion of the Court's work federalism and the commerce clause Discussions of the Court's new cases on the death penalty, including a discussion of the controversy within the Court about the propriety of citing foreign case law An expanded discussion of the Court's recent work in the area of privacy, including the Court's decisions with regard to partial birth abortions and same sex marriages An expanded section on the Court's continuing efforts to develop a coherent takings clause jurisprudence Full coverage of new developments and cases concerning affirmative action and school desegregation
