Dissent and the Supreme Court by Melvin I Urofsky

Dissent and the Supreme Court by Melvin I Urofsky

In his major work, acclaimed historian and judicial authority Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court's long history. Constitutional dialogue is one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. The Supreme Court has interpreted the meaning of the Constitution, acknowledged that the Court's majority opinions have not always been right, and initiated a critical discourse about what a particular decision should mean before fashioning subsequent decisions--largely through the power of dissent.

Urofsky shows how the practice grew slowly but steadily, beginning with the infamous and now overturned case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) during which Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion upheld slavery and ending with the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Dissent on the court and off, Urofsky argues in this major work, has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so.

Melvin I. Urofsky is professor of law and public policy and a professor emeritus of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and was the chair of its history department. He is the editor (with David W. Levy) of the five-volume collection of Louis Brandeis's letters, as well as the author of American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust and Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradition. He lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307379405
ISBN 10	030737940X
Title	Dissent and the Supreme Court
Author	Melvin I Urofsky
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Pantheon Books
Year published	2015-10-13
Number of pages	544
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.