Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court

Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court PDF Author: John M. Ferren
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876615
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
The Kentucky-born son of a Baptist preacher, with an early tendency toward racial prejudice, Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge (1894-1949) became one of the Court's leading liberal activists and an early supporter of racial equality, free speech, and church-state separation. Drawing on more than 160 interviews, John M. Ferren provides a valuable analysis of Rutledge's life and judicial decisionmaking and offers the most comprehensive explanation to date for the Supreme Court nominations of Rutledge, Felix Frankfurter, and William O. Douglas. Rutledge was known for his compassion and fairness. He opposed discrimination based on gender and poverty and pressed for expanded rights to counsel, due process, and federal review of state criminal convictions. During his brief tenure on the Court (he died following a stroke at age fifty-five), he contributed significantly to enhancing civil liberties and the rights of naturalized citizens and criminal defendants, became the Court's most coherent expositor of the commerce clause, and dissented powerfully from military commission convictions of Japanese generals after World War II. Through an examination of Rutledge's life, Ferren highlights the development of American common law and legal education, the growth of the legal profession and related institutions, and the evolution of the American court system, including the politics of judicial selection.

Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court

Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court PDF Author: John M. Ferren
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876615
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

Get Book

Book Description
The Kentucky-born son of a Baptist preacher, with an early tendency toward racial prejudice, Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge (1894-1949) became one of the Court's leading liberal activists and an early supporter of racial equality, free speech, and church-state separation. Drawing on more than 160 interviews, John M. Ferren provides a valuable analysis of Rutledge's life and judicial decisionmaking and offers the most comprehensive explanation to date for the Supreme Court nominations of Rutledge, Felix Frankfurter, and William O. Douglas. Rutledge was known for his compassion and fairness. He opposed discrimination based on gender and poverty and pressed for expanded rights to counsel, due process, and federal review of state criminal convictions. During his brief tenure on the Court (he died following a stroke at age fifty-five), he contributed significantly to enhancing civil liberties and the rights of naturalized citizens and criminal defendants, became the Court's most coherent expositor of the commerce clause, and dissented powerfully from military commission convictions of Japanese generals after World War II. Through an examination of Rutledge's life, Ferren highlights the development of American common law and legal education, the growth of the legal profession and related institutions, and the evolution of the American court system, including the politics of judicial selection.

A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court

A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court PDF Author: A.C. Pritchard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197665934
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A History of Securities Law and the Supreme Court explores how the Supreme Court has made (and remade) securities law. It covers the history of the federal securities laws from their inception during the Great Depression, relying on the justices' conference notes, internal memoranda, and correspondence to shed light on how they came to their decisions and drafted their opinions. That history can be divided into five periods that parallel and illustrate key trends of the Court's jurisprudence more generally. The first saw the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt--aided by his filling eight seats on the Court-triumph in its efforts to enact the securities laws and establish their constitutional legitimacy. This brought an end to the Court's long-standing hostility to the regulation of business. The arrival of Roosevelt's justices, all committed to social control of finance, ushered in an era of deference to the SEC's expertise that lasted through the 1940s and 1950s. The 1960s brought an era of judicial activism-and further expansion--by the Warren Court, with purpose taking precedence over text in statutory interpretation. The arrival of Lewis F. Powell, Jr. in 1972 brought a sharp reversal. Powell's leadership of the Court in securities law produced a counter-revolution in the field and an end to the SEC's long winning streak at the Court. Powell's retirement in 1987 marked the beginning of the final period of this study. In the absence of ideological consensus or strong leadership, the Court's securities jurisprudence meandered, taking a random walk between expansive and restrictive decisions.

In Chambers

In Chambers PDF Author: Todd C. Peppers
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813932661
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Written by former law clerks, legal scholars, biographers, historians, and political scientists, the essays in In Chambers tell the fascinating story of clerking at the Supreme Court. In addition to reflecting the personal experiences of the law clerks with their justices, the essays reveal how clerks are chosen, what tasks are assigned to them, and how the institution of clerking has evolved over time, from the first clerks in the late 1800s to the clerks of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In Chambers offers a variety of perspectives on the unique experience of Supreme Court clerks. Former law clerks—including Alan M. Dershowitz, Charles A. Reich, and J. Harvie Wilkinson III—write about their own clerkships, painting vivid and detailed pictures of their relationships with the justices, while other authors write about the various clerkships for a single justice, putting a justice's practice into a broader context. The book also includes essays about the first African American and first woman to hold clerkships. Sharing their insights, anecdotes, and experiences in a clear, accessible style, the contributors provide readers with a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Supreme Court.

The Court at War

The Court at War PDF Author: Cliff Sloan
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541736451
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
The inside story of how one president forever altered the most powerful legal institution in the country—with consequences that endure today By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices—the most by any president except George Washington—and handpicked the chief justice. But the wartime Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president. The Court at War explores this pivotal period. It provides a cast of unforgettable characters in the justices—from the mercurial, Vienna-born intellectual Felix Frankfurter to the Alabama populist Hugo Black; from the western prodigy William O. Douglas, FDR’s initial pick to be his running mate in 1944, to Roosevelt’s former attorney general and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson. The justices’ shameless capitulation and unwillingness to cross their beloved president highlight the dangers of an unseemly closeness between Supreme Court justices and their political patrons. But the FDR Court’s finest moments also provided a robust defense of individual rights, rights the current Court has put in jeopardy. Sloan’s intimate portrait is a vivid, instructive tale for modern times.

In a Time of Total War

In a Time of Total War PDF Author: Joshua E. Kastenberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317118065
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book is a judicial, military and political history of the period 1941 to 1954. As such, it is also a United States legal history of both World War II and the early Cold War. Civil liberties, mass conscription, expanded military jurisdiction, property rights, labor relations, and war crimes arising from the conflict were all issues to come before the federal judiciary during this period and well beyond since the Supreme Court and the lower courts heard appeals from the government’s wartime decisions well into the 1970s. A detailed study of the judiciary during World War II evidences that while the majority of the justices and judges determined appeals partly on the basis of enabling a large, disciplined, and reliable military to either deter or fight a third world war, there was a recognition of the existence of a tension between civil rights and liberties on the one side and military necessity on the other. While the majority of the judiciary tilted toward national security and deference to the military establishment, the judiciary’s recognition of this tension created a foundation for persons to challenge governmental narrowing of civil and individual rights after 1954. Kastenberg and Merriam present a clearer picture as to why the Court and the lower courts determined the issues before them in terms of external influences from both national and world-wide events. This book is also a study of civil-military relations in wartime so whilst legal scholars will find this study captivating, so will military and political historians, as well as political scientists and national security policy makers.

John Paul Stevens

John Paul Stevens PDF Author: Christopher E. Smith
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498523749
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
This book examines the judicial opinions and criminal justice policy impact of Justice John Paul Stevens, the U.S. Supreme Court’s most prolific opinion author during his 35-year career on the nation’s highest court. Although Justice Stevens, a Republican appointee of President Gerald Ford, had a professional reputation as a corporate antitrust law attorney, he immediately asserted himself as the Court’s foremost advocate of prisoners’ rights and Miranda rights when he arrived at the Court in 1975. In examining Justice Stevens’s opinions on these topics as well as others, including capital punishment and right to counsel, the chapters of the book connect his prior experiences with the development of his views on rights in criminal justice. In particular, the book examines his relevant experiences as a law clerk to Justice Wiley Rutledge in the Supreme Court’s 1947 term, a volunteer attorney handling criminal cases in Illinois, and a judge on the U.S. court of appeals to explore how these experiences shaped his understanding of the importance of rights in criminal justice. For many issues, such as those affecting imprisoned offenders, Justice Stevens was a strong defender of rights throughout his career. For other issues, such as capital punishment, there is evidence that he became increasingly protective of rights over the course of his Supreme Court career. The book also examines how Justice Stevens became increasingly important as a leading dissenter against the diminution of rights in criminal justice as the Supreme Court’s composition became increasingly conservative in the 1980s and thereafter. Because of the nature and complexity of Justice Stevens’s numerous and varied opinions over the course of his lengthy career, scholars find it difficult to characterize his judicial philosophy and impact with simple labels. Yet in the realm of criminal justice, close examination of his work reveals that he earned a reputation and an enduring legacy as an exceptionally important defender of constitutional rights.

The Third Disestablishment

The Third Disestablishment PDF Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190908149
Category : Church and state
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
The Third Disestablishment examines the formative period in the development of church-state law and the rise and decline of church-state separation as a legal construct and a cultural value.

Separating Church and State

Separating Church and State PDF Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501762079
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Steven K. Green, renowned for his scholarship on the separation of church and state, charts the career of the concept and helps us understand how it has fallen into disfavor with many Americans. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson distilled a leading idea in the early American republic and wrote of a wall of separation between church and state. That metaphor has come down from Jefferson to twenty-first-century Americans through a long history of jurisprudence, political contestation, and cultural influence. This book traces the development of the concept of separation of church and state and the Supreme Court's application of it in the law. Green finds that conservative criticisms of a separation of church and state overlook the strong historical and jurisprudential pedigree of the idea. Yet, arguing with liberal advocates of the doctrine, he notes that the idea remains fundamentally vague and thus open to loose interpretation in the courts. As such, the history of a wall of separation is more a variable index of American attitudes toward the forces of religion and state. Indeed, Green argues that the Supreme Court's use of the wall metaphor has never been essential to its rulings. The contemporary battle over the idea of a wall of separation has thus been a distraction from the real jurisprudential issues animating the contemporary courts.

The Bible, the School, and the Constitution

The Bible, the School, and the Constitution PDF Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199827907
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Steven K. Green tells the story of the 19th-century School Question, the nationwide debate over the place and funding of religious education, and how it became a crucial precedent for American thought about the separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008 PDF Author: Lucas A. Powe, Jr.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674032675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
In this engaging - and disturbing - book, a leading historian of the Court reveals the close fit between its decisions and the nation's politics. Drawing on more than four decades of thinking about the Supreme Court and its role in the American political system, this book offers a new, clear, and troubling perspective on American jurisprudence, politics, and history.