The Supreme Court and American Political Development

The Supreme Court and American Political Development
Author: Ronald Kahn
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2006-05-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0700614397

This innovative volume explores the evolution of constitutional doctrine as elaborated by the Supreme Court. Moving beyond the traditional "law versus politics" perspective, the authors draw extensively on recent studies in American Political Development (APD) to present a much more complex and sophisticated view of the Court as both a legal and political entity. The contributors--including Pam Brandwein, Howard Gillman, Mark Graber, Ronald Kahn, Tom Keck, Ken Kersch, Wayne Moore, Carol Nackenoff, Julie Novkov, and Mark Tushnet--share an appreciation that the process of constitutional development involves a complex interplay between factors internal and external to the Court. They underscore the developmental nature of the Court, revealing how its decision-making and legal authority evolve in response to a variety of influences: not only laws and legal precedents, but also social and political movements, election returns and regime changes, advocacy group litigation, and the interpretive community of scholars, journalists, and lawyers. Initial chapters reexamine standard approaches to the question of causation in judicial decision-making and the relationship between the Court and the ambient political order. Next, a selection of historical case studies exemplifies how the Court constructs its own authority as it defines individual rights and the powers of government. They show how interpretations of the Reconstruction amendments inform our understanding of racial discrimination, explain the undermining of affirmative action after Bakke, and consider why Roe v. Wade has yet to be overturned. They also tell how the Court has collaborated with political coalitions to produce the New Deal, Great Society, and Reagan Revolution, and why Native Americans have different citizenship rights than other Americans. These contributions encourage further debate about the nature and processes of constitutional change and invite APD scholars to think about law and the Court in more sophisticated ways.

No Day in Court

No Day in Court
Author: Sarah L. Staszak
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2015
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199399034

We are now more than half a century removed from height of the rights revolution, a time when the federal government significantly increased legal protection for disadvantaged individuals and groups, leading in the process to a dramatic expansion in access to courts and judicial authority to oversee these protections. Yet while the majority of the landmark laws and legal precedents expanding access to justice remain intact, less than two percent of civil cases are decided by a trial today. What explains this phenomenon, and why it is so difficult to get one's day in court? No Day in Court examines the sustained efforts of political and legal actors to scale back access to the courts in the decades since it was expanded, largely in the service of the rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Since that time, for political, ideological, and practical reasons, a multifaceted group of actors have attempted to diminish the role that courts play in American politics. Although the conventional narrative of backlash focuses on an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, Congress, and activists aiming to constrain the developments of the Civil Rights era, there is another very important element to this story, in which access to the courts for rights claims has been constricted by efforts that target the "rules of the game: " the institutional and legal procedures that govern what constitutes a valid legal case, who can be sued, how a case is adjudicated, and what remedies are available through courts. These more hidden, procedural changes are pursued by far more than just conservatives, and they often go overlooked. No Day in Court explores the politics of these strategies and the effect that they have today for access to justice in the U.S.

The Search for American Political Development

The Search for American Political Development
Author: Karen Orren
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2004-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521547642

Orren and Skowronek survey past and current 'APD' scholarship and outline a course of study for the future.

Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy

Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy
Author: Keith E. Whittington
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-03-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1400827752

Should the Supreme Court have the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution? The justices on the Supreme Court certainly seem to think so--and their critics say that this position threatens democracy. But Keith Whittington argues that the Court's justices have not simply seized power and circumvented politics. The justices have had power thrust upon them--by politicians, for the benefit of politicians. In this sweeping political history of judicial supremacy in America, Whittington shows that presidents and political leaders of all stripes have worked to put the Court on a pedestal and have encouraged its justices to accept the role of ultimate interpreters of the Constitution. Whittington examines why presidents have often found judicial supremacy to be in their best interest, why they have rarely assumed responsibility for interpreting the Constitution, and why constitutional leadership has often been passed to the courts. The unprecedented assertiveness of the Rehnquist Court in striking down acts of Congress is only the most recent example of a development that began with the founding generation itself. Presidential bids for constitutional leadership have been rare, but reflect the temporary political advantage in doing so. Far more often, presidents have cooperated in increasing the Court's power and encouraging its activism. Challenging the conventional wisdom that judges have usurped democracy, Whittington shows that judicial supremacy is the product of democratic politics.

Originalism in American Law and Politics

Originalism in American Law and Politics
Author: Johnathan O'Neill
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801881114

This book explains how the debate over originalism emerged from the interaction of constitutional theory, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and American political development. Refuting the contention that originalism is a recent concoction of political conservatives like Robert Bork, Johnathan O'Neill asserts that recent appeals to the origin of the Constitution in Supreme Court decisions and commentary, especially by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, continue an established pattern in American history. Originalism in American Law and Politics is distinguished by its historical approach to the topic. Drawing on constitutional commentary and treatises, Supreme Court and lower federal court opinions, congressional hearings, and scholarly monographs, O'Neill's work will be valuable to historians, academic lawyers, and political scientists.

Building the Judiciary

Building the Judiciary
Author: Justin Crowe
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-03-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400842573

How did the federal judiciary transcend early limitations to become a powerful institution of American governance? How did the Supreme Court move from political irrelevance to political centrality? Building the Judiciary uncovers the causes and consequences of judicial institution-building in the United States from the commencement of the new government in 1789 through the close of the twentieth century. Explaining why and how the federal judiciary became an independent, autonomous, and powerful political institution, Justin Crowe moves away from the notion that the judiciary is exceptional in the scheme of American politics, illustrating instead how it is subject to the same architectonic politics as other political institutions. Arguing that judicial institution-building is fundamentally based on a series of contested questions regarding institutional design and delegation, Crowe develops a theory to explain why political actors seek to build the judiciary and the conditions under which they are successful. He both demonstrates how the motivations of institution-builders ranged from substantive policy to partisan and electoral politics to judicial performance, and details how reform was often provoked by substantial changes in the political universe or transformational entrepreneurship by political leaders. Embedding case studies of landmark institution-building episodes within a contextual understanding of each era under consideration, Crowe presents a historically rich narrative that offers analytically grounded explanations for why judicial institution-building was pursued, how it was accomplished, and what--in the broader scheme of American constitutional democracy--it achieved.

The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development

The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development
Author: Richard M. Valelly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 898
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191086983

Scholars working in or sympathetic to American political development (APD) share a commitment to accurately understanding the history of American politics - and thus they question stylized facts about America's political evolution. Like other approaches to American politics, APD prizes analytical rigor, data collection, the development and testing of theory, and the generation of provocative hypotheses. Much APD scholarship indeed overlaps with the American politics subfield and its many well developed literatures on specific institutions or processes (for example Congress, judicial politics, or party competition), specific policy domains (welfare policy, immigration), the foundations of (in)equality in American politics (the distribution of wealth and income, race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual and gender orientation), public law, and governance and representation. What distinguishes APD is careful, systematic thought about the ways that political processes, civic ideals, the political construction of social divisions, patterns of identity formation, the making and implementation of public policies, contestation over (and via) the Constitution, and other formal and informal institutions and processes evolve over time - and whether (and how) they alter, compromise, or sustain the American liberal democratic regime. APD scholars identify, in short, the histories that constitute American politics. They ask: what familiar or unfamiliar elements of the American past illuminate the present? Are contemporary phenomena that appear new or surprising prefigured in ways that an APD approach can bring to the fore? If a contemporary phenomenon is unprecedented then how might an accurate understanding of the evolution of American politics unlock its significance? Featuring contributions from leading academics in the field, The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development provides an authoritative and accessible analysis of the study of American political development.

Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State

Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State
Author: Megan Ming Francis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2014-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107037107

This book extends what we know about the development of civil rights and the role of the NAACP in American politics. Through a sweeping archival analysis of the NAACP's battle against lynching and mob violence from 1909 to 1923, this book examines how the NAACP raised public awareness, won over American presidents, secured the support of Congress, and won a landmark criminal procedure case in front of the Supreme Court.

Ideas with Consequences

Ideas with Consequences
Author: Amanda Hollis-Brusky
Publisher: Studies in Postwar American Po
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199385521

Many of these questions--including the powers of the federal government, the individual right to bear arms, and the parameters of corporate political speech--had long been considered settled. But the Federalist Society was able to upend the existing conventional wisdom, promoting constitutional theories that had previously been dismissed as ludicrously radical. Hollis-Brusky argues that the Federalist Society offers several of the crucial ingredients needed to accomplish this constitutional revolution. It serves as a credentialing institution for conservative lawyers and judges, legitimizes novel interpretations of the constitution through a conservative framework, and provides a judicial audience of like-minded peers, which prevents the well-documented phenomenon of conservative judges turning moderate after years on the bench. Through these functions, it is able to exercise enormous influence on important cases at every level.

At War with Government

At War with Government
Author: Amy Fried
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 023155124X

Polling shows that since the 1950s Americans’ trust in government has fallen dramatically to historically low levels. In At War with Government, the political scientists Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris reveal that this trend is no accident. Although distrust of authority is deeply rooted in American culture, it is fueled by conservative elites who benefit from it. Since the postwar era conservative leaders have deliberately and strategically undermined faith in the political system for partisan aims. Fried and Harris detail how conservatives have sown distrust to build organizations, win elections, shift power toward institutions that they control, and secure policy victories. They trace this strategy from the Nixon and Reagan years through Gingrich’s Contract with America, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump’s rise and presidency. Conservatives have promoted a political identity opposed to domestic state action, used racial messages to undermine unity, and cultivated cynicism to build and bolster coalitions. Once in power, they have defunded public services unless they help their constituencies and rolled back regulations, perversely proving the failure of government. Fried and Harris draw on archival sources to document how conservative elites have strategized behind the scenes. With a powerful diagnosis of our polarized era, At War with Government also proposes how we might rebuild trust in government by countering the strategies conservatives have used to weaken it.