In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court

In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court
Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2013-09-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393073440

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Examines the initial years of the Roberts Court, covering the legal philosophies that have informed decisions on such major cases as the Affordable Care Act, the political structures behind appointments, and the struggle for dominance of the Court.

The Roberts Court

The Roberts Court
Author: Marcia Coyle
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 145162753X

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For years, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has been at the center of a constitutional maelstrom. Here, the much-honored, expert Supreme Court reporter Marcia Coyle's examination of four landmark cases is "informative, insightful, clear and fair...Coyle reminds us that Supreme Court decisions matter. A lot." (Portland Oregonian). Seven minutes after President Obama put his signature to a landmark national health care insurance program, a lawyer in the office of Florida GOP attorney general Bill McCollum hit a computer key, sparking a legal challenge to the new law that would eventually reach the nation’s highest court. Health care is only the most visible and recent front in a battle over the meaning and scope of the US Constitution. The battleground is the United States Supreme Court, and one of the most skilled, insightful, and trenchant of its observers takes us close up to watch it in action. Marcia Coyle’s brilliant inside analysis of the High Court captures four landmark decisions—concerning health care, money in elections, guns at home, and race in schools. Coyle examines how those cases began and how they exposed the great divides among the justices, such as the originalists versus the pragmatists on guns and the Second Amendment, and corporate speech versus human speech in the controversial Citizens United case. Most dramatically, her reporting shows how dedicated conservative lawyers and groups have strategized to find cases and crafted them to bring up the judicial road to the Supreme Court with an eye on a receptive conservative majority. The Roberts Court offers a ringside seat to the struggle to lay down the law of the land.

Uncertain Justice

Uncertain Justice
Author: Laurence Tribe
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0805099093

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An assessment of how the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is significantly influencing the nation's laws and reinterpreting the Constitution includes in-depth analysis of recent rulings and their implications.

Uncertain Justice

Uncertain Justice
Author: Laurence Tribe
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0805099131

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Harvard Law School scholars Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz reveal how Chief Justice John Roberts is shaking the foundation of our nation’s laws in Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution. From Citizens United to its momentous rulings regarding Obamacare and gay marriage, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has profoundly affected American life. Yet the court remains a mysterious institution, and the motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure. Now, in Uncertain Justice, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz show the surprising extent to which the Roberts Court is revising the meaning of our Constitution. Political gridlock, cultural change, and technological progress mean that the court’s decisions on key topics—including free speech, privacy, voting rights, and presidential power—could be uniquely durable. Acutely aware of their opportunity, the justices are rewriting critical aspects of constitutional law and redrawing the ground rules of American government. Tribe—one of the country’s leading constitutional lawyers—and Matz dig deeply into the court’s rulings, stepping beyond tired debates over judicial “activism” to draw out hidden meanings and silent battles. The undercurrents they reveal suggest a strikingly different vision for the future of our country, one that is sure to be hotly debated. Filled with original insights and compelling human stories, Uncertain Justice illuminates the most colorful story of all—how the Supreme Court and the Constitution frame the way we live. “Marvelous...Tribe and Matz’s insights are illuminating.... [They] offer well-crafted overviews of key cases decided by the Roberts Court ... [and] chart the Supreme Court’s conservative path, clarifying complex cases in accessible terms.”—The Chicago Tribune “Well-written and highly readable...The strength of the book is its painstaking explanation of all sides of the critical cases, giving full voice and weight to conservative and liberal views alike.”—The Washington Post

A Court Divided

A Court Divided
Author: Mark V. Tushnet
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2005
Genre: Constitutional law
ISBN: 9780393058680

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In this authoritative reckoning with the eighteen-year record of the Rehnquist Court, Georgetown law professor Mark Tushnet reveals how the decisions of nine deeply divided justices have left the future of the Court; and the nation; hanging in the balance. Many have assumed that the chasm on the Court has been between its liberals and its conservatives. In reality, the division was between those in tune with the modern post-Reagan Republican Party and those who, though considered to be in the Court's center, represent an older Republican tradition. As a result, the Court has modestly promoted the agenda of today's economic conservatives, but has regularly defeated the agenda of social issues conservatives; while paving the way for more radically conservative path in the future.

Business and the Roberts Court

Business and the Roberts Court
Author: Jonathan H. Adler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199859345

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Is the Roberts Court "pro-business"? If so, what does this mean for the law and the American people? Business and the Roberts Court provides the first critical analysis of the Court's business-related jurisprudence, combining a series of empirical and doctrinal analyses of how the Roberts Court has treated business and business law.

Unfit for Democracy

Unfit for Democracy
Author: Stephen E Gottlieb
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2016-01-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0814733018

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Asked if the country was governed by a republic or a monarchy, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Since its founding, Americans have worked hard to nurture and protect their hard-won democracy. And yet few consider the role of constitutional law in America’s survival. In Unfit for Democracy, Stephen Gottlieb argues that constitutional law without a focus on the future of democratic government is incoherent—illogical and contradictory. Approaching the decisions of the Roberts Court from political science, historical, comparative, and legal perspectives, Gottlieb highlights the dangers the court presents by neglecting to interpret the law with an eye towards preserving democracy. A senior scholar of constitutional law, Gottlieb brings a pioneering will to his theoretical and comparative criticism of the Roberts Court. The Roberts Court decisions are not examined in a vacuum but instead viewed in light of constitutional politics in India, South Africa, emerging Eastern European nations, and others. While constitutional decisions abroad have contributed to both the breakdown and strengthening of democratic politics, decisions in the Roberts Court have aggravated the potential destabilizing factors in democratic governments. Ultimately, Unfit for Democracy calls for an interpretation of the Constitution that takes the future of democracy seriously. Gottlieb warns that the Roberts Court’s decisions have hurt ordinary Americans economically, politically, and in the criminal process. They have damaged the historic American melting pot, increased the risk of anti-democratic paramilitaries, and clouded the democratic future.

The New Roberts Court, Donald Trump, and Our Failing Constitution

The New Roberts Court, Donald Trump, and Our Failing Constitution
Author: Stephen M. Feldman
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2017-07-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 331956451X

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This book traces the evolution of the constitutional order, explaining Donald Trump’s election as a symptom of a degraded democratic-capitalist system. Beginning with the framers’ vision of a balanced system—balanced between the public and private spheres, between government power and individual rights—the constitutional order evolved over two centuries until it reached its present stage, Democracy, Inc., in which corporations and billionaires wield herculean political power. The five conservative justices of the early Roberts Court, including the late Antonin Scalia, stamped Democracy, Inc., with a constitutional imprimatur, contravening the framers’ vision while simultaneously claiming to follow the Constitution’s original meaning. The justices believed they were upholding the American way of life, but they instead placed our democratic-capitalist system in its gravest danger since World War II. With Neil Gorsuch replacing Scalia, the new Court must choose: Will it follow the early Roberts Court in approving and bolstering Democracy, Inc., or will it restore the crucial balance between the public and private spheres in our constitutional system?

Taking Back the Constitution

Taking Back the Constitution
Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2020-07-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 030024598X

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How the Supreme Court's move to the right has distorted both logic and the Constitution What Supreme Court justices do is far more than just "calling balls and strikes." The Court has never simply evaluated laws and arguments in light of permanent and immutable constitutional meanings. Social, moral, and yes, political ideas have always played into the justices' impressions of how they think a case should be decided. Mark Tushnet traces the ways constitutional thought has evolved, from the liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society to the Reagan conservatism that has been dominant since the 1980s. Looking at the current crossroads in the constitutional order, Tushnet explores the possibilities of either a Trumpian entrenchment of the most extreme ideas of the Reagan philosophy, or a dramatic and destabilizing move to the left. Wary of either outcome, he offers a passionate and informed argument for replacing judicial supremacy with popular constitutionalism--a move that would restore to the other branches of government a role in deciding constitutional questions.

The Chief

The Chief
Author: Joan Biskupic
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0465093280

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An incisive biography of the Supreme Court's enigmatic Chief Justice, taking us inside the momentous legal decisions of his tenure so far. John Roberts was named to the Supreme Court in 2005 claiming he would act as a neutral umpire in deciding cases. His critics argue he has been anything but, pointing to his conservative victories on voting rights and campaign finance. Yet he broke from orthodoxy in his decision to preserve Obamacare. How are we to understand the motives of the most powerful judge in the land? In The Chief, award-winning journalist Joan Biskupic contends that Roberts is torn between two, often divergent, priorities: to carry out a conservative agenda, and to protect the Court's image and his place in history. Biskupic shows how Roberts's dual commitments have fostered distrust among his colleagues, with major consequences for the law. Trenchant and authoritative, The Chief reveals the making of a justice and the drama on this nation's highest court.