The Selden Society Lectures

The Selden Society Lectures

Author: Selden Society

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 707

ISBN-13: 9781575888149

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This volume contains reprints of the lectures delivered in the Selden Society lecture series from 1952 to 2000. The lecturers were chosen from among those pre-eminent in the field of English legal history, and the choice of topic was the lecturer's. The lectures therefore range very widely in subject and approach.


The Case Against the Supreme Court

The Case Against the Supreme Court

Author: Erwin Chemerinsky

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 2015-09-29

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0143128000

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Both historically and in the present, the Supreme Court has largely been a failure In this devastating book, Erwin Chemerinsky—“one of the shining lights of legal academia” (The New York Times)—shows how, case by case, for over two centuries, the hallowed Court has been far more likely to uphold government abuses of power than to stop them. Drawing on a wealth of rulings, some famous, others little known, he reviews the Supreme Court’s historic failures in key areas, including the refusal to protect minorities, the upholding of gender discrimination, and the neglect of the Constitution in times of crisis, from World War I through 9/11. No one is better suited to make this case than Chemerinsky. He has studied, taught, and practiced constitutional law for thirty years and has argued before the Supreme Court. With passion and eloquence, Chemerinsky advocates reforms that could make the system work better, and he challenges us to think more critically about the nature of the Court and the fallible men and women who sit on it.


Courting Death

Courting Death

Author: Carol S. Steiker

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-11-07

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0674737423

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Before constitutional regulation -- The Supreme Court steps in -- The invisibility of race in the constitutional revolution -- Between the Supreme Court and the states -- The failures of regulation -- An unsustainable system? -- Recurring patterns in constitutional regulation -- The future of the American death penalty -- Life after death


A Natural History of the Common Law

A Natural History of the Common Law

Author: S. F. C. Milsom

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2003-12-03

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0231503490

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How does law come to be stated as substantive rules, and then how does it change? In this collection of discussions from the James S. Carpentier Lectures in legal history and criticism, one of Britain's most acclaimed legal historians S. F. C. Milsom focuses on the development of English common law—the intellectually coherent system of substantive rules that courts bring to bear on the particular facts of individual cases—from which American law was to grow. Milsom discusses the differences between the development of land law and that of other kinds of law and, in the latter case, how procedural changes allowed substantive rules first to be stated and then to be circumvented. He examines the invisibility of early legal change and how adjustment to conditions was hidden behind such things as the changing meaning of words. Milsom points out that legal history may be more prone than other kinds of history to serious anachronism. Nobody ever states his assumptions, and a legal writer, addressing his contemporaries, never provided a glossary to warn future historians against attributing their own meanings to his words and therefore their own assumptions to his world. Formal continuity has enabled nineteenth-century assumptions to be carried back, in some respects as far back as the twelfth century. This book brings together Milsom's efforts to understand the uncomfortable changes that lie beneath that comforting formal surface. Those changes were too large to have been intended by anyone at the time and too slow to be perceived by historians working within the short periods now imposed by historical convention. The law was made not by great men making great decisions but by man-sized men unconcerned with the future and thinking only about their own immediate everyday difficulties. King Henry II, for example, did not intend the changes attributed to him in either land law or criminal law; the draftsman of De Donis did not mean to create the entail; nobody ever dreamed up a fiction with intent to change the law.


The Court and the World

The Court and the World

Author: Stephen Breyer

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2016-08-23

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1101912073

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In this original, far-reaching, and timely book, Justice Stephen Breyer examines the work of the Supreme Court of the United States in an increasingly interconnected world, a world in which all sorts of activity, both public and private—from the conduct of national security policy to the conduct of international trade—obliges the Court to understand and consider circumstances beyond America’s borders. Written with unique authority and perspective, The Court and the World reveals an emergent reality few Americans observe directly but one that affects the life of every one of us. Here is an invaluable understanding for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.


Repugnant Laws

Repugnant Laws

Author: Keith E. Whittington

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2020-05-18

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0700630368

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When the Supreme Court strikes down favored legislation, politicians cry judicial activism. When the law is one politicians oppose, the court is heroically righting a wrong. In our polarized moment of partisan fervor, the Supreme Court’s routine work of judicial review is increasingly viewed through a political lens, decried by one side or the other as judicial overreach, or “legislating from the bench.” But is this really the case? Keith E. Whittington asks in Repugnant Laws, a first-of-its-kind history of judicial review. A thorough examination of the record of judicial review requires first a comprehensive inventory of relevant cases. To this end, Whittington revises the extant catalog of cases in which the court has struck down a federal statute and adds to this, for the first time, a complete catalog of cases upholding laws of Congress against constitutional challenges. With reference to this inventory, Whittington is then able to offer a reassessment of the prevalence of judicial review, an account of how the power of judicial review has evolved over time, and a persuasive challenge to the idea of an antidemocratic, heroic court. In this analysis, it becomes apparent that that the court is political and often partisan, operating as a political ally to dominant political coalitions; vulnerable and largely unable to sustain consistent opposition to the policy priorities of empowered political majorities; and quasi-independent, actively exercising the power of judicial review to pursue the justices’ own priorities within bounds of what is politically tolerable. The court, Repugnant Laws suggests, is a political institution operating in a political environment to advance controversial principles, often with the aid of political leaders who sometimes encourage and generally tolerate the judicial nullification of federal laws because it serves their own interests to do so. In the midst of heated battles over partisan and activist Supreme Court justices, Keith Whittington’s work reminds us that, for better or for worse, the court reflects the politics of its time.


A Sketch of English Legal History

A Sketch of English Legal History

Author: Frederic William Maitland

Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1886363501

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"The Best Available Introduction to English Legal History" In this work Professor Colby has gathered, annotated and arranged into a sequential history of English law numerous essays by Frederic William Maitland and Francis C. Montague. Each chapter includes a list of recommended readings. These articles supplied what long had been needed for general readers and for law students-a brief but comprehensive, accurate but untechnical account of the origin and growth of English law. ... this series of articles now forms the best available introduction to English legal history. James F. Colby, iii Widely considered the father of legal history, Frederic William Maitland [1850-1906] was an English jurist and historian best known for the standard The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vol. (1895), written with Sir Frederick Pollock. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge and studied at Lincoln's Inn, London. Maitland was called to the bar in 1876, then practiced until 1884 when he became a reader in English law (1884) and professor (1888) at Cambridge. He founded the Selden Society in 1887. Hailed for his original outlook on history, his works profoundly influenced legal scholarship. An extraordinarily productive career was shortened by his death from tuberculosis at age 45. Francis C. Montague [1858-1935] was a Professor of History at University College, London and Lecturer in Modern History, Oriel College, Oxford. He was also the author of The History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Restoration (1907) and The Elements of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1910). James F. Colby [1850-1939] taught international law at Yale Law School from 1883 until 1885. He later taught history and political economics at Dartmouth College, and was Parker Professor of Law and Political Science at Dartmouth College from 1885-1916 and lectured in jurisprudence and international law at Boston University Law School from 1905-1922. CONTENTS CH. I Early English Law, 600 A.D.-1066 CH. II English Law Under Norman Rule and the Legal Reforms of Henry II., 1066-1216 CH. III Growth of Law from Henry II. to Edward I., 1154-1272 CH. IV Legal reform under Edward I. and the System of Writs, 1272-1307 CH. V Growth of Statute and Common Law and Rise of the Court of Chancery, 1307-1600 CH. VI Completion of the Common Law and Statutory Reforms after the Restoration, 1600-1688 CH. VII The Supremacy of Parliament and Rapid Growth of Statute Law, 1688-1800 CH. VIII Growth of Statute Law and Legal Reforms in the Nineteenth Century APPENDICES INDEX