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Constitutionalism and Democracy
This series publishes outstanding titles on constitutional politics, legal culture, and the historical relationship between democratic government and the social and economic forces that shape it. The editors seek manuscripts on constitutional development and legal history as well as both qualitative and quantitative analyses of judicial politics. At the same time, they aim to encompass a broader set of topics, including comparative law and courts, new institutionalism, and the theory of democratic principles and legal institutions.
Series Editors: Gregg Ivers and Kevin T. McGuire
Advisory Editors: Gregory Caldeira, Howard Gillman, David O’Brien, Mark Tushnet, Keith Whittington
Of Courtiers and Princes
Stories of Lower Court Clerks and Their JudgesPraise for In Chambers: "This new collection of essays, including some by former clerks, takes readers inside justices’ chambers for a look at clerkship life.... [T]he best parts of the book are the behind-the-scenes descriptions of life at the court."— Associated Press"An excellent book... It’s... More
Lighting the Way
Federal Courts, Civil Rights, and Public PolicyDo our federal courts, including the Supreme Court, lead or merely implement public policy? This is a critical question in the study and practice of law, with a long history of continued dispute and contradictory evidence. In Lighting the Way, Douglas Rice systematically examines both sides of this... More
The Battle for the Court
Interest Groups, Judicial Elections, and Public PolicyOnce largely ignored, judicial elections in the states have become increasingly controversial over the past two decades. Legal organizations, prominent law professors, and a retired Supreme Court justice have advocated the elimination of elections as a means to choose judges. One of their primary... More
Of Courtiers and Kings
More Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their JusticesSupreme Court justices have long relied on law clerks to help process the work of the Court. Yet few outside the Court are privy to the behind-the-scenes bonds that form between justices and their clerks.In Of Courtiers and Kings, Todd C. Peppers and Clare Cushman offer an intimate new look at the... More
Voters' Verdicts
Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court ElectionsIn Voters’ Verdicts, Chris Bonneau and Damon Cann address contemporary concerns with judicial elections by investigating factors that influence voters’ decisions in the election of state supreme court judges. Bonneau and Cann demonstrate that the move to nonpartisan elections, while it depresses... More
Diversity Matters
Judicial Policy Making in the U.S. Courts of AppealsUntil President Jimmy Carter launched an effort to diversify the lower federal courts, the U.S. courts of appeals had been composed almost entirely of white males. But by 2008, over a quarter of sitting judges were women and 15 percent were African American or Hispanic. Underlying the argument made... More
The View from the Bench and Chambers
Examining Judicial Process and Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of AppealsFor most of their history, the U.S. courts of appeals have toiled in obscurity, well out of the limelight of political controversy. But as the number of appeals has increased dramatically, while the number of cases heard by the Supreme Court has remained the same, the courts of appeals have become... More
A Storm over This Court
Law, Politics, and Supreme Court Decision Making in Brown v. Board of EducationOn the way to offering a new analysis of the basis of the Supreme Court’s iconic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Jeffrey Hockett critiques an array of theories that have arisen to explain it and Supreme Court decision making generally. Drawing upon justices’ books, articles, correspondence... More
The Nature of Rights at the American Founding and Beyond
Americans have been claiming and defending rights since long before the nation achieved independence. But few Americans recognize how profoundly the nature of rights has changed over the past three hundred years. In The Nature of Rights at the American Founding and Beyond, Barry Alan Shain gathers... More
In Chambers
Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their JusticesWritten 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... More
Institutional Games and the U.S. Supreme Court
Over the course of the past decade, the behavioral analysis of decisions by the Supreme Court has turned to game theory to gain new insights into this important institution in American politics. Game theory highlights the role of strategic interactions between the Court and other institutions in... More
Merely Judgment
Ignoring, Evading, and Trumping the Supreme CourtMerely Judgment uses affirmative action in government contracting, legislative vetoes, flag burning, hate speech, and school prayer as windows for understanding how Supreme Court decisions send signals regarding the Court’s policy preferences to institutions and actors (such as lower courts,... More
Battle over the Bench
Senators, Interest Groups, and Lower Court ConfirmationsWho gets seated on the lower federal courts and why? Why are some nominees confirmed easily while others travel a long, hard road to confirmation? What role do senators and interest groups play in determining who will become a federal judge? The lower federal courts have increasingly become the... More
Law, Politics, and Perception
How Policy Preferences Influence Legal ReasoningAre judges' decisions more likely to be based on personal inclinations or legal authority? The answer, Eileen Braman argues, is both. Law, Politics, and Perception brings cognitive psychology to bear on the question of the relative importance of norms of legal reasoning versus decision markers'... More
The View of the Courts from the Hill
Interactions between Congress and the Federal JudiciaryThe View of the Courts from the Hill explores the current interactions and relationship between the U.S. Congress and federal courts using a "governance as dialogue" approach, which argues that constitutional interpretation in the United States is a continuous and complex conversation among all... More
Answering the Call of the Court
How Justices and Litigants Set the Supreme Court AgendaThe U.S. Supreme Court is the quintessential example of a court that expanded its agenda into policy areas that were once reserved for legislatures. Yet scholars know very little about what causes attention to various policy areas to ebb and flow on the Supreme Court’s agenda. Vanessa A. Baird’s... More
Strategic Selection
Presidential Nomination of Supreme Court Justices from Herbert Hoover through George W. BushThe process by which presidents decide whom to nominate to fill Supreme Court vacancies is obviously of far-ranging importance, particularly because the vast majority of nominees are eventually confirmed. But why is one individual selected from among a pool of presumably qualified candidates? In... More
Judging on a Collegial Court
Influences on Federal Appellate Decision Makingin the professional world as a starting point for collaboration; rather than leaving decisions to just one person, dissent offers the opportunity to rethink or reinvent an idea, leading, one hopes, to a better result. When dissensus occurs in a federal court, however, it raises the question of... More
Justice Curtis in the Civil War Era
At the Crossroads of American ConstitutionalismDuring a career as both a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, Benjamin R. Curtis addressed practically every major constitutional question of the mid-nineteenth century, making judgments that still resonate in American law. Aside from a family memoir written by his brother over one hundred years... More
Creating Constitutional Change
Clashes over Power and Liberty in the Supreme CourtBecause the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court tell us what the Constitution means, they can create constitutional change. For quite some time, general readers who have been interested in understanding those changes have not had a concise volume that explores major decisions in which those changes... More
Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy
Critical Perspectives from around the WorldThis collection of essays by leading scholars of constitutional law looks at a critical component of constitutional democracy--judicial independence--from an international comparative perspective. Peter H. Russell's introduction outlines a general theory of judicial independence, while the... More
The Martinsville Seven
Race, Rape, and Capital PunishmentThis book offers the first comprehensive treatment of the case of the Martinsville Seven, a group of young black men executed in 1951 for the rape of a white woman in Martinsville, Virginia. Covering every aspect of the proceedings from the commission of the crime through two appeals, Eric W. Rise... More
The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson
In this comprehensive account of Thomas Jefferson's constitutional thought, David N. Mayer offers a fresh perspective on Jefferson's philosophy of government. Eschewing the "liberalism versus civic republicanism" debate that has so dominated early American scholarship in recent years, Mayer... More
Race Relations Litigation in an Age of Complexity
The first book-length study of civil rights litigation from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Race Relations Litigation in an Age of Complexity fills a void in the scholarly literature on American courts and poltics in the post Brown versus Board of Education era.
New Communitarian Thinking
Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and CommunitiesCommunitarian thought is at the heart of a fierce debate in political theory about the justice, efficacy, and future of liberalism and liberal societies. Amitai Etzioni has collected a sterling list of contributors who bring communitarian thinking to bear on such timely and contentious issues as... More