Download or read book Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court written by Richard H. Fallon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legitimacy and judicial authority -- Constitutional meaning : original public meaning -- Constitutional meaning : varieties of history that matter -- Law in the Supreme Court : jurisprudential foundations -- Constitutional constraints -- Constitutional theory and its relation to constitutional practice -- Sociological, legal, and moral legitimacy : today and tomorrow

Download or read book Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court written by Richard H. Fallon Jr. and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do self-proclaimed constitutional “originalists” so regularly reach decisions with a politically conservative valence? Do “living constitutionalists” claim a license to reach whatever results they prefer, without regard to the Constitution’s language and history? In confronting these questions, Richard H. Fallon reframes and ultimately transcends familiar debates about constitutional law, constitutional theory, and judicial legitimacy. Drawing from ideas in legal scholarship, philosophy, and political science, Fallon presents a theory of judicial legitimacy based on an ideal of good faith in constitutional argumentation. Good faith demands that the Justices base their decisions only on legal arguments that they genuinely believe to be valid and are prepared to apply to similar future cases. Originalists are correct about this much. But good faith does not forbid the Justices to refine and adjust their interpretive theories in response to the novel challenges that new cases present. Fallon argues that theories of constitutional interpretation should be works in progress, not rigid formulas laid down in advance of the unforeseeable challenges that life and experience generate. Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court offers theories of constitutional law and judicial legitimacy that accept many tenets of legal realism but reject its corrosive cynicism. Fallon’s account both illuminates current practice and prescribes urgently needed responses to a legitimacy crisis in which the Supreme Court is increasingly enmeshed.

Download or read book The Limits of Legitimacy written by Michael Zilis and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the U.S. Supreme Court announces a decision, reporters simplify and dramatize the complex legal issues by highlighting dissenting opinions and thus emphasizing conflict among the justices themselves. This often sensationalistic coverage fosters public controversy over specific rulings despite polls which show that Americans strongly believe in the Court’s legitimacy as an institution. In The Limits of Legitimacy, Michael A. Zilis illuminates this link between case law and public opinion. Drawing on a diverse array of sources and methods, he employs case studies of eminent domain decisions, analysis of media reporting, an experiment to test how volunteers respond to media messages, and finally the natural experiment of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. Zilis finds that the media tends not to quote from majority opinions. However, the greater the division over a particular ruling among the justices themselves, the greater the likelihood that the media will criticize that ruling, characterize it as "activist," and employ inflammatory rhetoric. Hethen demonstrates that the media’s portrayal of a decision, as much as the substance of the decision itself, influences citizens’ reactions to and acceptance of it. This meticulously constructed study and its persuasively argued conclusion advance the understanding of the media, judicial politics, political institutions, and political behavior.

Download or read book The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics written by Stephen Breyer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sitting justice reflects upon the authority of the Supreme CourtÑhow that authority was gained and how measures to restructure the Court could undermine both the Court and the constitutional system of checks and balances that depends on it. A growing chorus of officials and commentators argues that the Supreme Court has become too political. On this view the confirmation process is just an exercise in partisan agenda-setting, and the jurists are no more than Òpoliticians in robesÓÑtheir ostensibly neutral judicial philosophies mere camouflage for conservative or liberal convictions. Stephen Breyer, drawing upon his experience as a Supreme Court justice, sounds a cautionary note. Mindful of the CourtÕs history, he suggests that the judiciaryÕs hard-won authority could be marred by reforms premised on the assumption of ideological bias. Having, as Hamilton observed, Òno influence over either the sword or the purse,Ó the Court earned its authority by making decisions that have, over time, increased the publicÕs trust. If public trust is now in decline, one part of the solution is to promote better understandings of how the judiciary actually works: how judges adhere to their oaths and how they try to avoid considerations of politics and popularity. Breyer warns that political intervention could itself further erode public trust. Without the publicÕs trust, the Court would no longer be able to act as a check on the other branches of government or as a guarantor of the rule of law, risking serious harm to our constitutional system.

Download or read book Extra Legal Power and Legitimacy written by Clement Fatovic and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Extra-Legal Power and Legitimacy: Perspectives on Prerogative, Clement Fatovic and Benjamin A. Kleinerman examine the costs and benefits associated with how governments have yielded extra-legal powers in times of emergency.

Download or read book The Rights Paradox written by Michael A. Zilis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to the legitimacy of the Supreme Court when it protects 'equal justice under law'?

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 Legacy and Legitimacy written by Rosalee A. Clawson and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-20 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive examination of Black Americans? attitudes toward the Supreme Court.

Download or read book Justice on the Brink written by Linda Greenhouse and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping story of the Supreme Court’s transformation from a measured institution of law and justice into a highly politicized body dominated by a right-wing supermajority, told through the dramatic lens of its most transformative year, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning law columnist for The New York Times—with a new preface by the author “A dazzling feat . . . meaty, often scintillating and sometimes scary . . . Greenhouse is a virtuoso of SCOTUS analysis.”—The Washington Post In Justice on the Brink, legendary journalist Linda Greenhouse gives us unique insight into a court under stress, providing the context and brilliant analysis readers of her work in The New York Times have come to expect. In a page-turning narrative, she recounts the twelve months when the court turned its back on its legacy and traditions, abandoning any effort to stay above and separate from politics. With remarkable clarity and deep institutional knowledge, Greenhouse shows the seeds being planted for the court’s eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, expansion of access to guns, and unprecedented elevation of religious rights in American society. Both a chronicle and a requiem, Justice on the Brink depicts the struggle for the soul of the Supreme Court, and points to the future that awaits all of us.

Download or read book The Case Against the Supreme Court written by Erwin Chemerinsky and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Supreme Court and Constitutional Democracy written by John Agresto and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Supreme Court and Constitutional Democracy John Agresto traces the development of American judicial power, paying close attention to what he views as the very real threat of judicial supremacy. Agresto examines the role of the judiciary in a democratic society and discusses the proper place of congressional power in constitutional issues. Agresto argues that while the separation of congressional and judicial functions is a fundamental tenet of American government, the present system is not effective in maintaining an appropriate balance of power. He shows that continued judicial expansion, especially into the realm of public policy, might have severe consequences for America's national life and direction, and offers practical recommendations for safeguarding against an increasingly powerful Supreme Court. John Agresto's controversial argument, set in the context of a historical and theoretical inquiry, will be of great interest to scholars and students in political science and law, especially American constitutional law and political theory.

Download or read book Tocqueville s Nightmare written by Daniel R. Ernst and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: De Tocqueville once wrote that 'insufferable despotism' would prevail if America ever acquired a national administrative state. Between 1900 and 1940, radicals created vast bureaucracies that continue to trample on individual freedom. Ernst shows, to the contrary, that the nation's best corporate lawyers were among the creators of 'commission government'; that supporters were more interested in purging government of corruption than creating a socialist utopia; and that the principles of individual rights, limited government, and due process were designed into the administrative state.

Download or read book Supreme Disorder written by Ilya Shapiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A must-read for anyone interested in the Supreme Court."—MIKE LEE, Republican senator from Utah Politics have always intruded on Supreme Court appointments. But although the Framers would recognize the way justices are nominated and confirmed today, something is different. Why have appointments to the high court become one of the most explosive features of our system of government? As Ilya Shapiro makes clear in Supreme Disorder, this problem is part of a larger phenomenon. As government has grown, its laws reaching even further into our lives, the courts that interpret those laws have become enormously powerful. If we fight over each new appointment as though everything were at stake, it’s because it is. When decades of constitutional corruption have left us subject to an all-powerful tribunal, passions are sure to flare on the infrequent occasions when the political system has an opportunity to shape it. And so we find the process of judicial appointments verging on dysfunction. Shapiro weighs the many proposals for reform, from the modest (term limits) to the radical (court-packing), but shows that there can be no quick fix for a judicial system suffering a crisis of legitimacy. And in the end, the only measure of the Court’s legitimacy that matters is the extent to which it maintains, or rebalances, our constitutional order.

Download or read book The Dynamic Constitution written by Richard H. Fallon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised second edition of The Dynamic Constitution, Richard H. Fallon, Jr provides an engaging, sophisticated introduction to American constitutional law.

Download or read book Regulatory Rights written by Larry Yackle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We often hear—with particular frequency during recent Supreme Court nomination hearings—that justices should not create constitutional rights, but should instead enforce the rights that the Constitution enshrines. In Regulatory Rights, Larry Yackle sets out to convince readers that such arguments fundamentally misconceive both the work that justices do and the character of the American Constitution in whose name they do it. It matters who sits on the Supreme Court, he argues, precisely because justices do create individual constitutional rights. Traversing a wide range of Supreme Court decisions that established crucial precedents about racial discrimination, the death penalty, and sexual freedom, Yackle contends that the rights we enjoy are neither more nor less than what the justices choose to make of them. Regulatory Rights is a bracing read that will be heatedly debated by all those interested in constitutional law and the judiciary.

Download or read book Originalism and the Good Constitution written by John O. McGinnis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originalism holds that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to its meaning at the time it was enacted. In their innovative defense of originalism, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport maintain that the text of the Constitution should be adhered to by the Supreme Court because it was enacted by supermajorities--both its original enactment under Article VII and subsequent Amendments under Article V. A text approved by supermajorities has special value in a democracy because it has unusually wide support and thus tends to maximize the welfare of the greatest number. The authors recognize and respond to many possible objections. Does originalism perpetuate the dead hand of the past? How can originalism be justified, given the exclusion of African Americans and women from the Constitution and many of its subsequent Amendments? What is originalism's place in interpretation, after two hundred years of non-originalist precedent? A fascinating counterfactual they pose is this: had the Supreme Court not interpreted the Constitution so freely, perhaps the nation would have resorted to the Article V amendment process more often and with greater effect. Their book will be an important contribution to the literature on originalism, now the most prominent theory of constitutional interpretation.

Download or read book Living Originalism written by Jack M. Balkin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originalism and living constitutionalism, so often understood to be diametrically opposing views of our nation’s founding document, are not in conflict—they are compatible. So argues Jack Balkin, one of the leading constitutional scholars of our time, in this long-awaited book. Step by step, Balkin gracefully outlines a constitutional theory that demonstrates why modern conceptions of civil rights and civil liberties, and the modern state’s protection of national security, health, safety, and the environment, are fully consistent with the Constitution’s original meaning. And he shows how both liberals and conservatives, working through political parties and social movements, play important roles in the ongoing project of constitutional construction. By making firm rules but also deliberately incorporating flexible standards and abstract principles, the Constitution’s authors constructed a framework for politics on which later generations could build. Americans have taken up this task, producing institutions and doctrines that flesh out the Constitution’s text and principles. Balkin’s analysis offers a way past the angry polemics of our era, a deepened understanding of the Constitution that is at once originalist and living constitutionalist, and a vision that allows all Americans to reclaim the Constitution as their own.