The Bill of Rights, the Courts, and the Law

The Bill of Rights, perhaps the single most important document in American history, has provided a strong and remarkably durable framework in which the limits of government, the scope of individual liberty, and the nature of our democratic system have been defined for more than two hundred years. In the past several decades in particular, the American Bill of Rights has been subject to virtually continual reinterpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court through a series of landmark cases, while its provisions also have exerted a powerful influence over the movement toward democracy and freedom worldwide.

This third edition of The Bill of Rights, the Courts, and the Law serves to increase public understanding of the Bill of Rights and the American judicial process by presenting select cases and their underlying issues fairly. It allows readers to examine the various legal arguments with the help of expert commentary, offering the best, most accessible introduction to the Bill of Rights available to a nonscholarly audience.

Contributors

. Lynda Butler, College of William and Mary Marshall-Wythe School of Law

. A. E. Dick Howard, University of Virginia School of Law

. Robert M. O’Neil, University of Virginia School of Law and Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression

. Barbara Perry, Sweet Briar College Department of Government and International Affairs

. Rodney A. Smolla, University of Richmond T. C. Williams School of Law

. Melvin Urofsky, Virginia Commonwealth University Doctoral Program in Public Policy

Distributed for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy

David Bearinger is Associate Director of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy and a member of the VFH program staff since 1984.