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

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

By selecting and organizing the most important cases of our nation’s history, David O’Brien and new coauthor Gordon Silverstein have managed to make a daunting course manageable for both students and teachers. The inclusion of insightful headnotes and informative special features allows students to place individual cases―and the Court itself―in their larger context.

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.