Constitutional Law and Politics: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (Volume 2)

A contemporary, comprehensive look at the Supreme Court cases that have shaped our nation.

Constitutional Law and Politics does more than give students a comprehensive and up-to-date set of cases; it provides the tools needed to make sense of them. Silverstein’s contextualization of cases makes it easier for students to understand complicated decisions, engage with the field of American constitutional law, and succeed in the course. Silverstein includes recent landmark cases, such as Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee narrowing the application of the Voting Rights Act and Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia, which expands the scope of protections against discrimination on the basis of sex to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Twelfth Edition also will grapple with the Court’s ruling in the Mississippi abortion case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade.

David O’Brien was a Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer professor at the Woodrow Wilson department of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD, MA, and BA degrees in philosophy and political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was the author of numerous books, including Constitutional Law and Politics and Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award.

After many years on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he wrote about and taught American constitutional law, civil rights and civil liberties, Gordon Silverstein moved to Yale Law School as assistant dean for graduate programs, overseeing the law school’s PhD, JSD, LLM and MSL degree programs and teaching courses in American constitutionalism for Yale’s department of political science. He is the author of two books―Law’s Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics (Cambridge University Press) and Imbalance of Powers: Constitutional Interpretation and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press). He is the coeditor of Consequential Courts: Judicial Roles in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on the separation of powers, law and American foreign policy, comparative constitutional law, and judicial review.