"An incisive consideration of the Supremes, offering erudite yet accessible clues to legal thinking on the most important level."--Kirkus ReviewsIn this authoritative reckoning with the eighteen-year record of the Rehnquist Court, Georgetown law professor Mark Tushnet reveals how the decisions of nine deeply divided justices have left the future of the Court; and the nation; hanging in the balance. Many have assumed that the chasm on the Court has been bet...

A leading legal scholar asks a fundamental question: Do we need a theory of constitutional interpretation?Do we need a theory of constitutional interpretation? It is a common argument among originalists that however objectionable you may find their theory, at least they have one, whereas their opponents do not have any theory at all. But as Mark Tushnet argues, for most of the Supreme Court’s history, including some of its most exceptional periods, the Court operat...

Here a leading scholar in constitutional law, Mark Tushnet, challenges hallowed American traditions of judicial review and judicial supremacy, which allow U.S. judges to invalidate "unconstitutional" governmental actions. Many people, particularly liberals, have "warm and fuzzy" feelings about judicial review. They are nervous about what might happen to unprotected constitutional provisions in the chaotic worlds of practical politics and everyday life. By examining a wide range of situatio...

Designed for use in law school courses, Comparative Constitutional Law introduces fundamental debates on the nature of constitutions, constitutional comparison, and the relationships between constitutions and constitutionalism in its various forms. The book explores how constitutions are made and changed, including recent applications of "unconstitutional constitutional amendment" doctrines, and the role of different institutions - legislatures, executives, publics, as well as cou...

Self-described populist leaders around the world are dismantling their nation's constitutions. This has led to a widespread view that populism as such is inconsistent with constitutionalism. This book proposes that some forms of populism are inconsistent with constitutionalism, while others aren't. Context and detail matter. Power to the People offers a thin definition of constitutionalism that people from the progressive left to the conservative right should be able to agree on e...

A look at First Amendment coverage of music, non-representational art, and nonsenseThe Supreme Court has unanimously held that Jackson Pollock’s paintings, Arnold Schöenberg’s music, and Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” are “unquestionably shielded” by the First Amendment. Nonrepresentational art, instrumental music, and nonsense: all receive constitutional coverage under an amendment protecting “the freedom of speech,” even though none involves what we typically...

The Hughes Court: From Progressivism to Pluralism, 1930 to 1941 describes the closing of one era in constitutional jurisprudence and the opening of another. This comprehensive study of the Supreme Court from 1930 to 1941 – when Charles Evans Hughes was Chief Justice – shows how nearly all justices, even the most conservative, accepted the broad premises of a Progressive theory of government and the Constitution. The Progressive view gradually increased its hold throughout the decade, but a...

Although the field of constitutional law has become increasingly comparative in recent years, its geographic focus has remained limited. South Asia, despite being the site of the world's largest democracy and a vibrant if turbulent constitutionalism, is one of the important neglected regions within the field. This book remedies this lack of attention by providing a detailed examination of constitutional law and practice in five South Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and ...

Approaching the concept of Islamic constitutionalism from a comparative perspective, this thought-provoking study by Antoni Abat i Ninet and Mark Tushnet uses traditional Western political theory as a lens to develop a framework for analyzing the events known as the 'Arab Spring'.Writing with clarity and insight, the authors place Western and Arabic traditions into a constructive dialogue. They focus on whether we can develop a 'theory of revolutions' that helps us understand event...

Is the world facing a serious threat to the protection of constitutional democracy? There is a genuine debate about the meaning of the various political events that have, for many scholars and observers, generated a feeling of deep foreboding about our collective futures all over the world. Do these events represent simply the normal ebb and flow of political possibilities, or do they instead portend a more permanent move away from constitutional democracy that had been thought triumphant ...

Most recent discussion of the United States Constitution and war—both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq—has been dominated by two diametrically opposed views: the alarmism of those who see many current policies as portending gross restrictions on American civil liberties, and the complacency of those who see these same policies as entirely reasonable accommodations to the new realities of national security. Whatever their contributions to the public discussion and policy-making proc...

How the Supreme Court's move to the right has distorted both logic and the ConstitutionWhat Supreme Court justices do is far more than just "calling balls and strikes." The Court has never simply evaluated laws and arguments in light of permanent and immutable constitutional meanings. Social, moral, and yes, political ideas have always played into the justices' impressions of how they think a case should be decided. Mark Tushnet traces the ways constitutional thought has evolved, fr...