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Conceptual blending, say Fauconnier (cognitive science, U. of California-San Diego) and Turner (behavioral sciences, U. of Maryland), is a great mental capacity that in its most advanced, double-scope form, gave human ancestors superiority and allowed them to develop art, science, religion, culture, sophisticated tools, and language. They investigate its principles, dynamics, and role in human life. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.
Now with a new epilogue-- an unprecedented and unwavering history of the Supreme Court showing how its decisions have consistently favored the moneyed and powerful. Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy. Nor is the modern Court a vast improvement, with its incursions on voting rights and its willingness to place elections for sale. In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, Ian Millhiser tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the everyday people who have suffered the most from it. America ratified three constitutional amendments to provide equal rights to freed slaves, but the justices spent thirty years largely dismantling these amendments. Then they spent the next forty years rewriting them into a shield for the wealthy and the powerful. In the Warren era and the few years following it, progressive justices restored the Constitution's promises of equality, free speech, and fair justice for the accused. But, Millhiser contends, that was an historic accident. Indeed, if it weren't for several unpredictable events, Brown v. Board of Education could have gone the other way. In Injustices, Millhiser argues that the Supreme Court has seized power for itself that rightfully belongs to the people's elected representatives, and has bent the arc of American history away from justice.
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.
On the eve of a presidential election that may determine the makeup of Supreme Court justices for decades to come, prominent attorney James D. Zirin argues that the Court has become increasingly partisan, rapidly making policy choices right and left on bases that have nothing to do with law or the Constitution. Zirin explains how we arrived at the present situation and looks at the current divide through its leading partisans, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor on the left and Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the right. He also examines four of the Court’s most controversial recent decisions – Hobby Lobby, Obamacare, gay marriage, and capital punishment – arguing that these politicized decisions threaten to undermine public confidence in the Supreme Court.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021: POLITICS BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "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.
For decades political scientists studying the Court have adopted behavioral approaches and focused on the relatively narrow question of how the justices' policy preferences influence their voting behavior. This emphasis has illuminated important aspects of Supreme Court politics, but it has also left unaddressed many other important questions about this unique and fascinating institution. Drawing on "the new institutionalism" in the social sciences, the distinguished contributors to this volume attempt to fill this gap by exploring a variety of topics, including the Court's institutional development and its relationship to broader political contexts such as party regimes, electoral systems, social movements, social change, legal precedents, political identities, and historically evolving economic structures. The book's initial chapters examine the nature of the Court's distinctive norms as well as the development of its institutional powers and practice. A second section relates the development of Supreme Court politics to the historical development of other political institutions and social movements. Concluding chapters explore how its decision making in particular areas of law or periods of time is influenced by—and influences—its socio-political milieu. These contributions offer provocative insights regarding the Court's role in maintaining or disrupting political and economic structures, as well as social structures and identities tied to ideology, class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. The Supreme Court in American Politics shows how we can develop an enriched understanding of this institution, and open up exciting new areas of research by placing it in the broader context of politics in the United States.
This lucidly-written text is aimed at students and teachers of American politics who have little or no previous knowledge of the United States Supreme Court, the third co-equal branch of national government.
Historically, the political question doctrine has held the courts from resolving constitutional issues that are better left to other departments of government, as a way of maintaining the system of checks and balances. However, this book discusses the gradual changes in the parameters of the doctrine, including its current position dealing with increasingly extraterritorial concerns.
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.