Law Commons^™

An Appeal To Books, Amir H. Ali

Michigan Law Review

This feels a fit, even urgent, moment to celebrate our books and the role they play vis-à-vis the law, the courts, and the truth.

As this issue goes to print, our nation’s highest court faces forceful criticism that some of its most significant decisions have been detached from objective fact. In recent Terms, the Supreme Court’s majority has doubled down on deciding major constitutional questions based on “history and tradition”—that is, the majority’s understanding of what the nation was like centuries ago. Just as quickly as these justices praised the objectivity of their fealty to history, they met widespread rebuke …

Foreword: The Books Of Justices, Linda Greenhouse

Michigan Law Review

For this Michigan Law Review issue devoted to recently published books about law, I thought it would be interesting to see what books made an appearance in the past year’s work of the Supreme Court. I catalogued every citation to every book in those forty opinions in order to see what patterns emerged: what books the justices cited, which justices cited which books, and what use they made of the citations. To begin with, I should define what I mean by “books". For the purposes of this Foreword, I excluded some types of reading matter that may have a book-like …

Justice Scalia And The Idea Of Judicial Restraint, John F. Manning

Michigan Law Review

Review of A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law by Antonin Scalia .

The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman

Michigan Law Review

Review of A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law by Antonin Scalia .

Linnaean Taxonomy And Globalized Law, Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Review of The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities by Stephen Breyer.

An "Unintended Consequence": Dred Scott Reinterpreted, Sam Erman

Michigan Law Review

Austin Allen's monograph marks the 150th anniversary of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford with a revisionist interpretation of that oft-examined case. Many scholars have portrayed the case as a proslavery decision that fanned sectional fires. After all, the Court held that blacks were not U.S. citizens and that Congress was impotent to bar slavery in U.S. territories. Allen, by contrast, understands the case primarily as a judicial attempt to rationalize federal commerce and slavery jurisprudences. Part I argues that this ambitious reinterpretation enriches, but does not topple, existing Dred Scott historiography. In the case of the Court's citizenship …

On Dworkin And Borkin, Tom Lininger

Michigan Law Review

This Essay will use Dworkin's and Davis's scholarship as a jumping-off point for a discussion of the Supreme Court nomination process. I argue that while Dworkin's and Davis's books, when read together, expose a significant problem with the current nomination process, a possible solution to this predicament may lie in a change to the judicial code of ethics and the procedural rules for confirmation of judges. My analysis will proceed in four steps. Part I will address Dworkin's arguments. Part II will evaluate the analysis and evidence in Davis's book. Part III will consider an additional variable to which neither …

The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer

Michigan Law Review

In August 2006, the New York Times caused a stir by reporting that the number of female law clerks at the United States Supreme Court has fallen sharply in the first full Term in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer on the bench. In an era in which nearly fifty percent of all law school graduates are women, the Times reported, less than twenty percent of the clerks in the Court's 2006 Term - seven of thirty-seven - are women. In interviews, Justices Souter and Breyer viewed the sharp drop in the number of female clerks as an …

The D'Oh! Of Popular Constitutionalism, Neal Devins

Michigan Law Review

This Review will be divided into three parts. Part I will both summarize The Most Democratic Branch and highlight some of the difficulties that the Supreme Court would face in implementing Rosen's decision-making model. In particular, by allowing the Court to invalidate laws for a host of "antidemocratic" reasons, Rosen's matrix does not constrain the Court in a predictable way. Part II will examine some of the empirical evidence about public attitudes toward the Supreme Court, including public awareness of Supreme Court decisions. I will contend that the Court cannot look to the people to sort out the Constitution's meaning …

Judging The Law Of Politics, Guy-Uriel Charles

Michigan Law Review

Election law scholars are currently engaged in a vigorous debate regarding the wisdom of judicial supervision of democratic politics. Ever since the Court's 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr, the Court has increasingly supervised a dizzying array of election-related matters. These include the regulation of political parties, access to electoral ballots, partisanship in electoral institutions, the role of race in the design of electoral structures, campaign financing, and the justifications for limiting the franchise. In particular, and as a consequence of the Court's involvement in the 2000 presidential elections in Bush v. Gore, a central task of election …

Deferring, Frederick Schauer

Michigan Law Review

Many academics, upon encountering a book on deference by a leading legal theorist, would assume that the book was still another contribution to a long and prominent debate about the existence (or not) of an obligation to obey the law. But that would be a mistake. In fact, this is a book not about obligation or obedience but about deference, and it is precisely in that difference that the significance of Philip Soper's book lies. Especially in law, where the Supreme Court (sometimes) defers to the factual, legal, and even constitutional determinations of Congress and administrative agencies, where appellate courts …

The Originalist And Normative Case Against Judicial Activism: A Reply To Professor Randy Barnett, Steven G. Calabresi

Michigan Law Review

In Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, Professor Randy E. Barnett lays out a bold defense of the theory of originalism in constitutional interpretation. Professor Barnett's book is perhaps the most important book about originalism since Robert H. Bork's The Tempting of America. Barnett presents a normative case as to why contemporary Americans should agree to be governed by the original meaning of the Constitution, and, like most sophisticated originalists, he nicely distinguishes between original meaning and original intent. Barnett correctly notes that what really matters in constitutional interpretation is not what the Framers intended that provision …

Does The Supreme Court Matter? Civil Rights And The Inherent Politicization Of Constitutional Law, Matthew D. Lassiter

Michigan Law Review

More than a decade ago, in a colloquium sponsored by the Virginia Law Review, scholars of the civil rights movement launched a fierce assault on Michael J. Klarman's interpretation of the significance of the Supreme Court's famous school desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Klarman's "backlash thesis," initially set forth in a series of law review and history journal articles and now serving as the centerpiece of his new book, revolves around two central claims. First, he argues that the advancements toward racial equality generally attributed to Brown were instead the inevitable products of long-term political, …

Church, State, And Freedom: A Review, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

The Supreme Court's opinion in the Everson case declaring that the separation-of-church-and-state limitation derived from the First Amendment was equally applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment opened up new vistas on the church-state problems in this country. Opponents of released time programs were quick to seize the opening thus afforded as evidenced by the litigation in the McCollum and Zorach cases. And even before the Everson case reached it, the Supreme Court, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of Jehovah's Witnesses, had been engaged at length with the task of defining the dimensions of religious freedom as secured …

Bontecou: The Federal Loyalty-Security Program, Theodore J. St. Antoine S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of THE FEDERAL LOYALTY-SECURITY PROGRAM. By Eleanor Bontecou.

King: Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice Of The United States 1888-1910., Louis P. Haller

Michigan Law Review

A Review of MELVILLE WESTON FULLER, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES 1888-1910. By Willard L. King.

Freund: On Understanding The Supreme Court., Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of ON UNDERSTANDING THE SUPREME COURT. By Paul A. Freund.

De Toledano And Lasky: Seeds Of Treason, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of SEEDS OF TREASON. By Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky.

Wendell: Relations Between The Federal And State Courts, Glenn R. Winters

Michigan Law Review

A Review of RELATIONS BETWEEN THE FEDERAL AND STATE COURTS. By Mitchell Wendell.

Reel: The Case Of General Yamashita, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of THE CASE OF GENERAL YAMASHITA By A. Frank Reel.

Frank: Mr. Justice Black: The Man And His Opinions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of MR. JUSTICE BLACK: THE MAN AND HIS OPINIONS By John P. Frank.

Recent Legal Literature, Henry H. Swan, James F. Tracey, Robert E. Bunker, Floyd R. Mechem, Bradley Thompson, James H. Brewster, Floyd R. Mechem, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Michigan Law Review

Hughes: Handbook of Admiralty Law; Wilgus: Cases on the General Principles of the Law of Private Corporations; Spelling: A Treatise on Injunctions and Other Extraordinary Remedies; Brannon: A Treatise on the Rights and Privileges Guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; Boone: Real Property Law, 2nd ed.; Abbott and Abbott: The Clerks' and Conveyancers' Assistant; Rose: Notes on the United States Reports; Nichols: Britton: An English Translation and Notes