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 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 172 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 The Supreme Court and the Living Constitution written by Kenneth Frank Mott and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by Howard Lee McBain and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Living U S Constitution written by Saul K. Padover and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1995-05-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable book updated the study of constitutional law with the addition of twenty contemporary Supreme Court cases dealing with such controversial topics as the legislative veto, stop-and-frisk, “set asides” to benefit minorities, and hate speech. Beginning with the story of the forming of the Constitution, it includes illuminating character sketches of the delegates written by their contemporaries, as well as the complete text of the Constitution itself. The Supreme Court decisions that the author cites were selected for their variety and complexity, and because they shed light on the problems that arise under the rule of the Constitution and the interpretations of that rule. This third edition was prepared by Jacob W. Landynski, an expert on constitutional law and a longtime colleague at the New School for Social Research of the original author, the outstanding historian and political scientist Saul K. Padover. Besides adding twenty additional cases, Professor Landynski re-edited the existing cases and rewrote the case introductions throughout in order to make the book as informative and concise as possible. The result is a unique and important contribution toward understanding the document upon which our nation is founded.
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by Peter P. Sgroi and published by Julian Messner. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the function and adaptability of the Constitution through a description and analysis of three major decisions--Marbury vs. Madison, Dred Scott, and United States vs. Nixon.
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by Denny Schillings and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Supreme Court and the Living Constitution written by Arthur Selwyn Miller and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Active Liberty written by Stephen Breyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new approach to the Constitution and courts of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.For Justice Breyer, the Constitution’s primary role is to preserve and encourage what he calls “active liberty”: citizen participation in shaping government and its laws. As this book argues, promoting active liberty requires judicial modesty and deference to Congress; it also means recognizing the changing needs and demands of the populace. Indeed, the Constitution’s lasting brilliance is that its principles may be adapted to cope with unanticipated situations, and Breyer makes a powerful case against treating it as a static guide intended for a world that is dead and gone. Using contemporary examples from federalism to privacy to affirmative action, this is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the role and power of our courts.
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 Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution written by John W. Compton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Deal is often said to represent a sea change in American constitutional history, overturning a century of precedent to permit an expanded federal government, increased regulation of the economy, and eroded property protections. John Compton offers a surprising revision of this familiar narrative, showing that nineteenth-century evangelical Protestants, not New Deal reformers, paved the way for the most important constitutional developments of the twentieth century. Following the great religious revivals of the early 1800s, American evangelicals embarked on a crusade to eradicate immorality from national life by destroying the property that made it possible. Their cause represented a direct challenge to founding-era legal protections of sinful practices such as slavery, lottery gambling, and buying and selling liquor. Although evangelicals urged the judiciary to bend the rules of constitutional adjudication on behalf of moral reform, antebellum judges usually resisted their overtures. But after the Civil War, American jurists increasingly acquiesced in the destruction of property on moral grounds. In the early twentieth century, Oliver Wendell Holmes and other critics of laissez-faire constitutionalism used the judiciary’s acceptance of evangelical moral values to demonstrate that conceptions of property rights and federalism were fluid, socially constructed, and subject to modification by democratic majorities. The result was a progressive constitutional regime—rooted in evangelical Protestantism—that would hold sway for the rest of the twentieth century.
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.
Download or read book The Constitution and the New Deal written by G. Edward White and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a powerful new narrative, G. Edward White challenges the reigning understanding of twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions, particularly in the New Deal period. He does this by rejecting such misleading characterizations as "liberal," "conservative," and "reactionary," and by reexamining several key topics in constitutional law. Through a close reading of sources and analysis of the minds and sensibilities of a wide array of justices, including Holmes, Brandeis, Sutherland, Butler, Van Devanter, and McReynolds, White rediscovers the world of early-twentieth-century constitutional law and jurisprudence. He provides a counter-story to that of the triumphalist New Dealers. The deep conflicts over constitutional ideas that took place in the first half of the twentieth century are sensitively recovered, and the morality play of good liberals vs. mossbacks is replaced. This is the only thoroughly researched and fully realized history of the constitutional thought and practice of all the Supreme Court justices during the turbulent period that made America modern.
Download or read book Living Constitution Dying Faith written by Bradley C. S. Watson and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2009 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Living Constitution, Dying Faith, political scientist and legal historian Bradley Watson examines how the contemporary embrace of the "living" Constitution has arisen from the radical transformation of American political thought. This transformation, brought about in the late nineteenth century by the philosophies of social Darwinism and pragmatism, explains how and why contemporary jurisprudence is so alien to the constitutionalism of the American Founders. To understand why today's courts rule the way they do, one must start with the ideas exposed by and explained in Watson's timely tome. Today's view--rooted in progressivism--is not simply that we have an interpretable Constitution, but that we have a Constitution which must be interpreted in light of "historically situated," continually evolving notions of the individual, the state, and society. This modern historical approach has been embraced by the judicial appointees of both Democratic and Republican presidents, by both liberals and conservatives, for a century or more. Living Constitution, Dying Faith shows how such an approach has directly undermined Americans' faith in a limited Constitution--as well as their faith in the eternal verities.
Download or read book Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes written by H. L. Pohlman and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Persuasive. A welcome addition." —The Journal of Legal History "A masterly exposition of the complex details of Holmes' Supreme Court work." —The Core Review In this work, H.L. Pohlman calls for a new interpretation of Holmes as a moderate defender of free speech, and provides a window into Holmes' basic understanding of American constitutionalism. Pohlman argues that Holmes played a crucial role in the development of the idea that the Constitution is a living entity, an idea that differed radically from nineteenth-century antecedents.
Download or read book Our Ageless Constitution written by W. David Stedman and published by National Book Network. This book was released on 1987 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Keeping Faith with the Constitution written by Goodwin Liu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it. In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances. The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.
