The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019537939X ISBN 13: 9780195379396

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

The Supreme Court has been the site of some of the great debates of American history, from child labor and prayer in the schools, to busing and abortion. The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions offers lively and insightful accounts of the most important cases ever argued before the Court, from Marbury v. Madison and Scott v. Sandford (the Dred Scott decision) to Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.

This new edition of the Guide contains more than 450 entries on major Supreme Court cases, including 53 new entries on the latest landmark rulings. Among the new entries are Bush v. Gore, Nixon v. United States, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. Four decisions (Hamdi v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Rasu v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padilla) are considered in a single essay entitled "Enemy Combatant Cases." Arranged alphabetically and written by eminent legal scholars, each entry provides the United States Reports citation, the date the case was argued and decided, the vote of the Justices, who wrote the opinion for the Court, who concurred, and who dissented. More important, the entries feature an informative account of the particulars of the case, the legal and social background, the reasoning behind the Courts decision, and the cases impact on American society. For this edition, Ely has added an extensive Further Reading section and revised the Case Index and Topical Index.

For anyone interested in the great controversies of our time, this invaluable book is a must reada primer on the epic constitutional battles that have informed American life.

About this title

Review:

Kermit L. Hall, Dean of the College of Humanities, Executive Dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, and Professor of History and Law at Ohio State University, is well versed in American constitutional and legal history, and has a skillful touch when it comes to editing the contributions of well over 100 legal scholars (from attorneys and state supreme court justices to professors of law, political science, constitutional history, and government), producing a reference tome that invites the attention of lay legal beagles, students of American history, and practicing members of the legal profession.

The first 348 pages are devoted to an alphabetically arranged presentation of more than 400 of the Supreme Court's most significant and consequential decisions, from Abington School District v. Schempp (1963, reaffirming that the establishment clause forbids public schools from sponsoring religious prayerful practices) to Zurcher v. "The Stanford Daily" (1978, ruling 5 to 3 that the Palo Alto police had violated neither the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press nor the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches when they obtained a warrant and inspected the offices of Stanford University's student newspaper). Each case synopsis, generally half a page to a full page in length, describes the background incident, the constitutional issues in question, a concise summary of the reasoning behind the majority and dissenting opinions, what the public reaction was, and in what ways that ruling affected future cases and laws.

In addition, there's a glossary of terms, defining general legal concepts such as bail as well as less commonly known practices such as the Bad Tendency Test, an appendix containing the Constitution of the United States, another appendix covering the nominations and succession of Supreme Court justices, and an exhaustively comprehensive topical index. It's a pleasure to see a reference work that so effectively and engagingly treats the major decisions of the Supreme Court from 1789 to present. --Stephanie Gold

About the Author:

The late Kermit Hall was President of the State University of New York at Albany.
James W. Ely Jr. is Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Professor of Law, and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 019537939X
• ISBN 13: 9780195379396
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 528
• Editor: Hall Kermit, Ely Jr. James W