Earl Warren
How Many Constitutions Can Liberals Have?
America’s Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By By Akhil Reed Amar (Basic Books, 615 pp., $29.99) READ MORE >>
Why the Supreme Court Justices Won’t Be Crudely Political When They Rule on Obamacare
In the weeks preceding the Obamacare case, many veteran Supreme Court-watchers could not bring themselves to believe that a majority of the justices would find the individual health insurance mandate unconstitutional. But now that the oral argument is over, the consensus has abruptly shifted, with increased focus on the supposedly ironclad opposition between the five “conservative” justices and the four “liberals.” READ MORE >>
The Dream of Law
Law in American History, Volume I: From the Colonial Years Through the Civil WarBy G. Edward White (Oxford University Press, 565 pp., $39.95) READ MORE >>
Incarceration Blues
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice By William J. Stuntz (Harvard University Press, 413 pp., $35) READ MORE >>
Obama’s Law
The Court of Celebrity
Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media By Richard Davis (Cambridge University Press, 241 pp., $28.99) READ MORE >>
Robust and Wide-Open
Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion By Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 674 pp., $35) READ MORE >>
It's Alive
Kagan's Strict Constructionism
The Wall Street Journal digs up Elena Kagan's 1983 master's thesis, in which she attacks judicial activism: In the Oxford paper, Ms. Kagan wrote that Supreme Court justices should rest their rulings squarely on a firm legal foundation, such as statutes and court precedents. Only then can court rulings command respect and stand the test of time, she wrote. ... READ MORE >>
