Making Our Democracy Work

Stephen Breyer

文学

法律 美国 政治 StephenBreyer 宪法 law 民主

2010-9

Knopf

目录
part i / The People’s Trust One Judicial Review: The Democratic Anomaly 3 Two Establishing Judicial Review: Marbury v. Madison 12 Three The Cherokees 22 Four Dred Scott 32 Five Little Rock 49 Six A Present-Example 68 ii / Decisions That Work 73 Seven Basic Approach 75 Eight Congress, Statutes, and Purposes 88 Nine The Executive Branch,Administrative Action,and Comparative Expertise 106 Ten The States and Federalism: Decentralization and Subsidiarity 121 Eleven Other Federal Courts: Specialization 137 Twelve Past Court Decisions: Stability 149 part iii / Protecting Individuals 157 Thirteen Individual Liberty: Permanent Values and Proportionality 159 Fourteen The President, National Security, and Accountability: Korematsu 172 Fifteen Presidential Power: Guantánamo and Accountability 194 Conclusion Appendix A Images 221 Appendix B Background: The Court 228 Acknowledgments 233 Notes 235 Index 255 Contents
【展开】
内容简介
The Supreme Court is one of the most extraordinary institutions in our system of government. Charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution, the nine unelected justices of the Court have the awesome power to strike down laws enacted by our elected representatives. Why does the public accept the Court’s decisions as legitimate and follow them, even when those decisions are highly unpopular? What must the Court do to maintain the public’s faith? How can the Court help make our democracy work? These are the questions that Justice Stephen Breyer tackles in this groundbreaking book. Today we assume that when the Court rules, the public will obey. But Breyer declares that we cannot take the public’s confidence in the Court for granted. He reminds us that at various moments in our history, the Court’s decisions were disobeyed or ignored. And through investigations of past cases, concerning the Cherokee Indians, slavery, and Brown v. Board of Education, he brilliantly captures the steps—and the missteps—the Court took on the road to establishing its legitimacy as the guardian of the Constitution. Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution’s text or to the eighteenth-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circumstances—an approach that will best demonstrate to the public that the Constitution continues to serve us well. The Court, he believes, must also respect the roles that other actors—such as the president, Congress, administrative agencies, and the states—play in our democracy, and he emphasizes the Court’s obligation to build cooperative relationships with them. Finally, Justice Breyer examines the Court’s recent decisions concerning the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, contrasting these decisions with rulings concerning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. He uses these cases to show how the Court can promote workable government by respecting the roles of other constitutional actors without compromising constitutional principles. Making Our Democracy Work is a tour de force of history and philosophy, offering an original approach to interpreting the Constitution that judges, lawyers, and scholars will look to for many years to come. And it further establishes Justice Breyer as one of the Court’s greatest intellectuals and a leading legal voice of our time.
【展开】
下载说明

1、追日是作者栎年创作的原创作品,下载链接均为网友上传的的网盘链接!

2、相识电子书提供优质免费的txt、pdf等下载链接,所有电子书均为完整版!

下载链接