The Myth of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court Decisions - Hardcover

Roosevelt III, Kermit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300114680 ISBN 13: 9780300114683

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2006

Synopsis

This carefully considered book is a welcome addition to the debate over judicial activism.” Constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt III offers an elegantly simple way to resolve the heated discord between conservatives, who argue that the Constitution is immutable, and progressives, who insist that it is a living document that must be reinterpreted in new cultural contexts so that its meaning evolves. Roosevelt uses plain language and compelling examples to explain how the Constitution can be both a constant and an organic document.
Recent years have witnessed an increasing drumbeat of complaints about judicial behavior, focusing particularly on Supreme Court decisions that critics charge are reflections of the Justices’ political preferences rather than enforcement of the Constitution. The author takes a balanced look at these controversial decisions through a compelling new lens of constitutional interpretation. He clarifies the task of the Supreme Court in constitutional cases, then sets out a model to describe how the Court creates doctrine to implement the meaning of the Constitution. Finally, Roosevelt uses this model to show which decisions can be justified as legitimate and which cannot.

About this title

About the Author:

Kermit Roosevelt III is professor of law, University of Pennsylvania Law School, and author of the novel In the Shadow of the Law. He lives in Philadelphia.

From Publishers Weekly:

Roosevelt, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, defends the Supreme Court against right-wing charges of undue judicial activism. Roosevelt sees the "activist" label as code for political disagreement with the outcomes of cases. A more productive approach, he suggests, would be to examine decisions for what he terms "legitimacy." Roosevelt's theory rests on distinguishing the meaning of a constitutional provision from the doctrine the Supreme Court uses to implement that meaning. The nomenclature seems unnecessarily abstruse, but the author clarifies his argument by surveying the Court's rulings on diverse issues, including the death penalty, abortion and freedom of speech. In most instances, Roosevelt finds the Court's decisions as at least minimally legitimate (that is, within the range of constitutional interpretation that reasonable judges could adopt) even though he disagrees with some of them. This willingness to recognize the good faith of outcomes he disapproves of is a winning characteristic of this book. The author's tolerant approach is matched by the composure of his writing style. If Roosevelt (who wrote the novel In the Shadow of the Law) is right that "excessive vilification" of the Supreme Court is dangerous to democracy, then his call for principled analysis rather than partisan name-calling is a timely contribution to our public discourse. (Oct.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0300114680
• ISBN 13: 9780300114683
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272