- The Constitution and the New Deal
- In a wholly new narrative of power and force, 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.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2002
- The Constitution's Text in Foreign Affairs
- This book describes the constitutional law of foreign affairs derived from the historical understanding of the Constitution's text. Examining recurring foreign affairs controversies such as the power to enter armed conflict and the power to make and break treaties, and showing how the words, structure, and context of the Constitution can resolve pivotal court cases and modern disputes, the author provides a counterpoint to more conventional discussions that tend to downplay the guiding ability of the Constitution.
- Hardcover 2007
- Constitutional Self-Government
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2007
- The Failure of the Founding Fathers
- Based on seven years of archival research, the book describes previously unknown aspects of the electoral college crisis of 1800, presenting a revised understanding of the early days of two great institutions that continue to have a major impact on American history: the plebiscitarian presidency and a Supreme Court that struggles to put the presidency's claims of a popular mandate into constitutional perspective. Through close studies of two Supreme Court cases, Ackerman shows how the court integrated Federalist and Republican themes into the living Constitution of the early republic.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
- Freedom's Law
- Ronald Dworkin argues that Americans have been systematically misled about what their Constitution is and how judges interpret it. In spirited and illuminating discussions of both recent constitutional cases and general constitutional principles, Ronald Dworkin argues that a distinctly American version of government based on the moral reading of the Constitution is in fact the best account of what democracy really is.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1997
- Implementing the Constitution
- This book argues that the U.S. Supreme Court performs two functions. The first is to identify the Constitution's idealized "meaning." The second is to develop tests and doctrines to realize that meaning in practice. Bridging the gap between the two--implementing the Constitution--requires moral vision, but also practical wisdom and occasionally a willingness to make compromises.
- Hardcover 2001
- The Irony of Free Speech
- How free is the speech of someone who can't be heard? Not very--and this, Owen Fiss suggests in this incisive book, is where the First Amendment comes in. He reframes the debate by showing how restrictions on political expenditures, hate speech, and pornography can be defended in terms of the First Amendment, not despite it.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- Judging Under Uncertainty
- In this book, Adrian Vermeule shows that any approach to legal interpretation rests on institutional and empirical premises about the capacities of judges and the systemic effects of their rulings. He argues that legal interpretation is above all an exercise in decisionmaking under severe empirical uncertainty. In view of their limited information and competence, judges should adopt a restrictive, unambitious set of tools for interpreting statutory and constitutional provisions.
- Hardcover 2006
- Law and Revolution, II, The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition
- Harold Berman's masterwork narrates the interaction of evolution and revolution in the development of Western law. This new volume explores two successive transformations of the Western legal tradition under the impact of the sixteenth-century German Reformation and the seventeenth-century English Revolution, with particular emphasis on Lutheran and Calvinist influences. Berman examines the far-reaching consequences of these apocalyptic upheavals on the systems in Germany and England and throughout Europe as a whole.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2006
- Only Words
- MacKinnon contends that pornography, racial and sexual harassment, and racial hate speech are acts of intimidation, subordination, terrorism, and discrimination, and should be legally treated as such.
- Paperback 1996 / Hardcover
- Overcoming Law
Richard Posner discusses the structure and behavior of the legal profession; constitutional theory; interdisciplinary approaches to law; the nature of legal reasoning; and legal pragmatism. Although written by a sitting judge, the book does not avoid controversy, and contains frank appraisals of feminist and critical race theories, the behavior of the German and British judiciaries in wartime, and the excesses of social constructionist theories of sexual behavior.
Throughout, the book is unified by Posner's distinctive stance, which is pragmatist in philosophy, economic in methodology, and liberal (in the sense of John Stuart Mill's liberalism) in politics. Brilliantly written, eschewing jargon and technicalities, it makes a major contribution to the debate about the role of law in our society.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1996
- Peaceful Revolution
- Although they claim to revere it, few Americans understand the Constitution's workings. Its real importance for the average citizen is as an enduring reminder of the moral vision that shaped the nation's founding. Maxwell Bloomfield looks at the broader appeal that constitutional idealism has always made to the American imagination through publications and films. He draws upon such neglected sources to illustrate the way in which media coverage contributes to major constitutional change.
- Hardcover 2000
- The Place of Families
- Arguing that family life helps create the virtues and character required for citizenship, McClain shows that the connection between family self-government and democratic self-government does not require the deep-laid gender inequality that has historically accompanied it. McClain argues for a political theory of the family that embraces equality, defends rights as facilitating responsibility, and supports families in ways that respect men's and women's capacities for self-government.
- Hardcover 2006
- Presidential Constitutionalism in Perilous Times
- Presidents have exercised extraordinary power to protect the nation in ways that raised serious constitutional concerns about individual liberties and separation of powers. By looking at examples through different constitutional perspectives, Matheson achieves a deeper understanding of wartime presidential power in general and of President Bush’s assertions of executive power in particular.
- Hardcover 2009
- Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes
- When the law makes decisions about groups based on averages, the public benefit can be enormous. On the other hand, profiling and stereotyping may lead to injustice. How can we decide which stereotypes are accurate, which are distortions, which can be applied fairly, and which will result in unfair stigmatization? These decisions must rely not only on statistical and empirical accuracy, but also on morality. As Schauer argues, there is good profiling and bad profiling. If we can effectively determine which is which, we stand to gain, not lose, a measure of justice.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
- Religious Freedom and the Constitution
- Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. Religious Freedom and the Constitution offers practical, moderate, and appealing terms for the settlement of many hot-button issues that have plunged religious freedom into controversy. It calls Americans back to the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a religiously diverse people, and it offers a valuable set of tools for working toward that end.
- Hardcover 2007
- Revolution by Judiciary
- Although constitutional law is supposed to be fixed and enduring, its central narrative in the twentieth century has been one of radical reinterpretation--Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore. What, if anything, justifies such radical reinterpretation? How does it work doctrinally? What, if anything, structures it or limits it? Rubenfeld finds a pattern in American constitutional interpretation that answers these questions convincingly.
- Hardcover 2005
- Saying What the Law Is
- Taking the reader up to and through such controversial recent Supreme Court decisions as the Texas sodomy case and the University of Michigan affirmative action case, Fried sets out to make sense of the main topics of constitutional law: the nature of doctrine, federalism, separation of powers, freedom of expression, religion, liberty, and equality.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2005
- Semblances of Sovereignty
- Hardcover 2002
- Separating Power
- The separation of powers along functional lines--legislative, executive, and judicial--has been a core concept of American constitutionalism since the Revolution. In Separating Power, Gerhard Casper offers a clear portrait of the issues of separation of power in the founding period, as well as a suggestion that in modern times we should be reluctant to tie separation of powers notions to their own procrustean bed.
- Hardcover 1997
- Separation of Church and State
- In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later.
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2004
- To Keep and Bear Arms
- Joyce Malcolm illuminates the historical facts underlying the current passionate debate in America about gun-related violence, the Brady Bill, and the National Rifle Association, revealing the original meaning and intentions behind the individual right to "bear arms."
- Paperback 1996 / Hardcover
- The Transatlantic Constitution
- Departing from traditional approaches to colonial legal history, Mary Sarah Bilder argues that American law and legal culture developed within the framework of an evolving, unwritten transatlantic constitution that lawyers, legislators, and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic understood. The central tenet of this constitution--that colonial laws and customs could not be repugnant to the laws of England but could diverge for local circumstances--shaped the legal development of the colonial world.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2008
- The Trouble with Principle
- Stanley Fish is an equal opportunity antagonist, and here he turns with his customary gusto to the trouble with principle. He argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those who invoke one are always making a rhetorical and political gesture. In the course of making this argument, Fish takes up questions about academic freedom and hate speech, affirmative action and multiculturalism, the boundaries between church and state, and much more. Sparing no one, he shows how our notions of intellectual and religious liberty are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend.
- Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2001
- We the People, Volume 2, Transformations
- Constitutional change, seemingly so orderly, has in fact always been a revolutionary process, as Bruce Ackerman makes clear in We the People: Transformations. After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party revolutionized the traditional system of constitutional amendment as they put principles of liberty and equality into higher law. Another wrenching transformation occurred during the Great Depression, when Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers vindicated a new vision of activist government against an assault by the Supreme Court. These are the crucial episodes in American constitutional history that Ackerman takes up in this second volume of a trilogy hailed as "one of the most important contributions to American constitutional thought in the last half-century" (Cass Sunstein, New Republic).
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2000