Paul D Moreno

--A newly revised and updated version of the 2008 revised edition with updated introduction, four new chapters. --The editors were encouraged to update this edition with issues of diversity in mind. They have done so by including the expertise of more women and people of color. Also includes suggestions for further reading. --The audience for the work is primarily scholarly, though the work does lend itself to classroom discussion and course adoption as well. Readers would include legal scholars, legal anthropologists, and those who work in issues of modern rights and social justice.

"Paul Moreno's "How the Court Became Supreme" explains how the United States Supreme Court turned itself into the most powerful court the world has ever seen. It is supreme today not only within the judicial branch but over the legislative and executive branches. Indeed, the modern Court has even acquired the power to choose Presidents, as it effectively did in Bush v. Gore. Every June, as the Court nears the end of its term and delivers anticipated decisions, every major media outlet in the nation covers the results and disseminates its rulings. A generation ago, by contrast, hardly anybody knew or cared about the Court's opening or closing. Before 1987, nearly all nominees to the Court sailed through confirmation hearings, often with little or no notice from the American public. When a vacancy occurs today, of course, an epic political bloodbath is likely to ensue. In another sign of the Court's overarching importance, who a presidential nominee is likely to appoint has become a paramount issue in voters' minds. In 2016, for example, Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of providing a list of potential Court nominees because, as he said, voters consider the appointing of Justices among the President's most important functions. Fifty years ago, such a ploy would have been both unthinkable and unnecessary. Today, both political parties complain about what they perceive as judicial supremacy. However, neither acknowledge what precisely that means or how it happened. Tracing the long history of the Court's expansion in power and importance, Moreno suggests that we cannot blame the Constitution itself since nothing might surprise the Founders more than the imperial judiciary. Their Constitution contained a multitude of safeguards to prevent judicial supremacy, and those safeguards remain today, but most have fallen into a state of disuse. Nor is judicial review to blame, since if the people want the Court to protect constitutional limits against the usurpations of the elected branches, then such authority must remain in the hands of the Court. It only becomes a problem-a threat rather than an aid to constitutional democracy-when the Court itself exercises legislative or executive power under what many see as the guise of judicial review. "How the Court Became Supreme" tells the story of the origin and development of that problem, offering solutions that might push the Court toward restoration of its more traditional role in our constitutional republic"--

The irreducibly constitutional nature of the Civil War's prelude and legacy is the focus of this absorbing collection of nine essays by a diversity of political theorists and historians. The contributors examine key constitutional developments leading up to the war, the crucial role of Abraham Lincoln's statesmanship, and how the constitutional aspects of the war and Reconstruction endured in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thoughtful, informative volume covers a wide range of topics: from George Washington's conception of the Union and his fears for its future to Martin Van Buren's state-centered, anti-secessionist federalism; from Lincoln's approach to citizenship for African Americans to Woodrow Wilson's attempt to appropriate Lincoln for the goals of Progressivism. Each essay zeroes in on the constitutional causes or consequences of the war and emphasizes how constitutional principles shape political activity. Accordingly, important figures, disputes, and judicial decisions are placed within the broader context of the constitutional system to explain how ideas and institutions, independently and in dialogue with the courts, have oriented political action and shaped events over time.

This book tells the story of constitutional government in America during the period of the 'social question'. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, and before the 'second Reconstruction' and cultural revolution of the 1960s, Americans dealt with the challenges of the urban and industrial revolutions. In the crises of the American Revolution and the Civil War, the American founders - and then Lincoln and the Republicans - returned to a long tradition of Anglo-American constitutional principles. During the Industrial Revolution, American political thinkers and actors gradually abandoned those principles for a set of modern ideas, initially called progressivism. The social crisis, culminating in the Great Depression, did not produce a Lincoln to return to the founders' principles, but rather a series of leaders who repudiated them. Since the New Deal, Americans have lived in a constitutional twilight, not having completely abandoned the natural-rights constitutionalism of the founders, nor embraced the entitlement-based welfare state of modern liberalism.

This collection of essays shows how the constitutional aspects of the Civil War were part of American politics for a long time before and after the conflict by examining developments from the founding era to the Progressive era. The contributors, both political theorists and historians, consider constitutional issues leading to the Civil War, the crucial role of Abraham Lincoln's statesmanship, and how the constitutional aspects of the War and Reconstruction endured in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.