Peaceful Revolution

“Legal scholars too rarely raise their heads from legal texts, especially Supreme Court reports. When they do, to place the court’s opinions ’in context,’ they almost always assume that the relevant contexts are political or economic. Bloomfield corrects the lawyers’ error by reminding them (and us) that constitutional law also has a cultural context. Not only are court opinions situated in a ’high’ intellectual culture of law and elite opinion, which legal scholars participate in and usually take for granted, they also operate in a broader culture of popular ideas. Bloomfield rediscovers and recreates the atmosphere of contemporary popular culture.”—John V. Orth, author of The North Carolina State Constitution

“An insightful scholarly study of how ideas and images of constitutional government permeate popular culture...A significant contribution to the history of 20th-century popular and political culture.”—Kirkus Reviews