The Constrained Court

The Constrained Court
Author: Michael A. Bailey
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2011-08-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1400840260

How do Supreme Court justices decide their cases? Do they follow their policy preferences? Or are they constrained by the law and by other political actors? The Constrained Court combines new theoretical insights and extensive data analysis to show that law and politics together shape the behavior of justices on the Supreme Court. Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman show how two types of constraints have influenced the decision making of the modern Court. First, Bailey and Maltzman document that important legal doctrines, such as respect for precedents, have influenced every justice since 1950. The authors find considerable variation in how these doctrines affect each justice, variation due in part to the differing experiences justices have brought to the bench. Second, Bailey and Maltzman show that justices are constrained by political factors. Justices are not isolated from what happens in the legislative and executive branches, and instead respond in predictable ways to changes in the preferences of Congress and the president. The Constrained Court shatters the myth that justices are unconstrained actors who pursue their personal policy preferences at all costs. By showing how law and politics interact in the construction of American law, this book sheds new light on the unique role that the Supreme Court plays in the constitutional order.

Why Didn't We Riot?

Why Didn't We Riot?
Author: Issac J. Bailey
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1635420288

In these impassioned, powerful essays, an award-winning journalist deals forthrightly with what it means to be Black in an America that still supports Trump. South Carolina–based journalist Issac J. Bailey reflects on a wide range of complex, divisive topics—from police brutality and Confederate symbols to respectability politics and white discomfort—which have taken on a fresh urgency with the protest movement sparked by George Floyd’s killing. Bailey has been honing his views on these issues for the past quarter of a century in his professional and private life, which included an eighteen-year stint as a member of a mostly white Evangelical Christian church. Why Didn’t We Riot? speaks to and for the millions of Black and Brown people throughout the United States who were effectively pushed back to the back of the bus in the Trump era by a media that prioritized the concerns and feelings of the white working class and an administration that made white supremacists giddy, and explains why the country’s fate in 2020 and beyond is largely in their hands. It will be an invaluable resource for the everyday reader, as well as political analysts, college professors and students, and political consultants and campaigns vying for high office.

United States Reports

United States Reports
Author: United States. Supreme Court
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1436
Release: 2006
Genre: Law reports, digests, etc
ISBN: