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Law

100 Supreme Court Cases

2020-02-06 By Rob Weir Leave a Comment

Randy Barnett is a libertarian-leaning law professor at Georgetown. You may have come across his previous books, Restoring the Lost Constitution (2004) and Our Republican Constitution (2016). He’s joined up with Josh Blackman (South Texas College of Law) for a new book: An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know.

As a reasonably well-informed American, but by no means a legal scholar, I started with an image in my mind, a mental model of sorts, for how the Constitution worked. We have a government of limited, enumerated powers, with a 10th Amendment that reserved other powers to the states and the people, etc. I knew that there have been some perturbations from that ideal, during wartime and during the Great Depression, but I had taken the ideal as the accepted norm, one that we’d (eventually) swing around to again.

Barnett and Blackman have disabused me of that notion. What is particularly impressive is they did so without pushing an overt point of view in the book. They pretty much lay out of the facts of the case, quote from the court’s opinions, but offer none of their own. But in the way they have ordered and connected the cases, and from pondering the questions directed to the reader in the “Study Guide” sections, the contradictions and deviations in contemporary constitutional interpretation are made vivid and blatant.

(Of course, it is possible that other readers, with a different ideological bent, would come to a different conclusion, and read this as an illustration of how progressive jurists remedied a flawed original constitution by nullifying economic rights of the individual and bringing greater equality by enlarging the scope of federal regulatory powers.)

The book gives its deepest focus to the evolution of due process and equal protection, but it also gives a good level of coverage to the 1st Amendment and to the (de)evolution of private contract and property rights.

Purchasers of the book are also given access to an online supplement of short videos corresponding to each of the 63 chapters. These videos pretty much repeat the material of the chapter, and are accompanied by photographs illustrating the parties and controversies involved. These photographs had been collected by Blackman over the years and were originally intended for a coffee-table book.

This is an easy read, one that requires no previous legal training. If you are seeking a single volume introduction to the Constitution, warts and all, this is a good place to start.

Filed Under: Law

The Dirty Dozen

2018-11-16 By Rob Weir 1 Comment

A brief note on The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom.

I really had high expectations for this book, written as it was by a dream team of Cato (Robert A. Levy) and Institute for Justice (William H. Mellor) authors.  Add in a forward by Richard A. Epstein, and this book should be great.

The basic format is to take 12 issues, and for each one to examine the relevant Supreme Court decisions, asking for each one:

  • What is the Constitutional issue?
  • What were the facts?
  • Where did the Court go wrong?
  • What are the implications?

The general theme is to show how things went off the rails, how a particular Supreme Court decision, as the title suggests, “radically expanded government” or “eroded freedom.”

The book is quite readable, and will be approachable by anyone with basic knowledge of American government and our constitutional order.

The issues covered range from interstate commerce (Wickard v. Filburn) to campaign finance reform (McConnell v. Federal Election Commission) to gun rights (United States v. Miller.   These are all relevant, evergreen issues.  However, as the observant reader will no doubt notice, a lot has happened in these areas since this book was published back in 2008, like Heller and Citizens United.

As a result, much in the book is out of date.  But the approach, and execution, is brilliant.  (More, please!)  Again, I had high expectations for this book.  And now I have earnest wishes for the thorough updating this books deserves.  A new preface (added a decade ago) is not enough.

Filed Under: Classical Liberal, Intermediate Text, Law Tagged With: Robert A. Levy, William H. Mellor

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