Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice - Softcover

Epstein L; Walker T

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933116803 ISBN 13: 9781933116808

Publisher: CQ Press, 2006

Synopsis

Examining the Supreme Court's interpretation of the basic liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments to the Constitution, the authors cover such important topics as freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, discrimination, and political participation. Shaving off 50 pages with strategic streamlining, the book is now leaner, allowing students to engage more effectively with material, while allowing instructors to assign more cases without necessarily assigning more pages. Bringing the volume fully up-to-date, this sixth edition gives increased attention to the electronic age and the significance of the Internet on speech, press, libel, obscenity, and privacy, as well as the impact of the war on terrorism on rights, liberty, and justice.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This new edition of Rights, Liberties, and Justice is part of the innovative, highly successful two-volume text that blends the best of legal and political science approaches to constitutional law. Lee Epstein and Thomas G. Walker have carefully selected excerpts from important cases and have provided extensive commentary to help students follow the path of the evolving law.

While Epstein and Walker excerpt in the traditional manner both new and classic cases that best illustrate the development of constitutional law, their approach is distinctive in that it also recognizes the political factors that influence judicial decisions. They emphasize the arguments raised by lawyers and interest groups, and include material that brings out the rich political context in which decisions are made, including the ideological and behavioral inclinations of justices, the politics of judicial selection, and the impact of public opinion and positions taken by elected officials.

The authors draw students into the subject and help them understand why each case is included and how it fits into the development of constitutional doctrine. Students discover that Supreme Court cases are more than just legal names and citations, that they involve real people engaged in real disputes. To further animate the text for students, Epstein and Walker include profiles of influential groups and justices, photographs of litigants, exhibits from the cases, and full descriptions of the events that led to the suits. A helpful appendix includes a glossary of legal terms.

What's New?

The fourth edition of Rights, Liberties, and Justice has been updated throughout to include recent scholarship and key decisions handed down since the publication of the last edition. Also new:

A new chapter (8) on the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms ;

New "Global Perspective" boxes in which the authors compare and contrast U.S. Supreme Court decisions with policies developed in other countries;

"Aftermath" boxes that describe what happened to particular litigants after the Court's rulings.

With the burgeoning of online resources for researching the Supreme Court, Epstein and Walker have included numerous electronic sources throughout the text. Chapter 1, "The Supreme Court and the Constitution," has a new section on how to research the Court using online and print references. Relevant Web site addresses are included throughout, giving readers access to the full opinion for each excerpted case and to the audio recording of oral arguments when available.

About the Author:

Lee Epstein is the Beatrice Kuhn Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She received her Ph.D. from Emory University. She is coauthor of The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and the Death Penalty (1992) with Joseph Kobylka; Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments (2005) with Jeffrey A. Segal; The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (2007) with Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker; and The Choices Justices Make (1998) with Jack Knight, which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award for the best book on law and courts. In addition, she is coauthor, with Walter F. Murphy and C. Herman Pritchett of Courts, Judges and Politics, 6th ed. (2006).

Thomas G. Walker is Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science at Emory University where he has won several teaching awards for his courses on constitutional law and the judicial process. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. His book, A Court Divided, written with Deborah J. Barrow, won the prestigious V.O. Key Award for the best book on southern politics. He is the coauthor of The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments, 4th ed. (2007) with Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, and Harold J. Spaeth.

About this edition

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1933116803
• ISBN 13: 9781933116808
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 6
• Number of pages: 788