The Supreme Court In And Out Of The Stream Of History

Available as a single volume or part of the 10 volume set Supreme Court in American Society.

Available as a single volume or part of the 10 volume set Supreme Court in American Society

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the 1930s a band of smart and able young men, some still in their twenties, helped Franklin D. Roosevelt transform an American nation in crisis. They were the junior officers of the New Deal. Thomas G. Corcoran, Benjamin V. Cohen, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, and James Rowe helped FDR build the modern Democratic Party into a progressive coalition whose command over power and ideas during the next three decades seemed politically invincible. This is the first book about this group of Rooseveltians and their linkage to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Vietnam War debacle. Michael Janeway grew up inside this world. His father, Eliot Janeway, business editor of Time and a star writer for Fortune and Life magazines, was part of this circle, strategizing and practicing politics as well as reporting on these men. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of events and previously unavailable private letters and other documents, Janeway crafts a riveting account of the exercise of power during the New Deal and its aftermath. He shows how these men were at the nexus of reform impulses at the electoral level with reform thinking in the social sciences and the law and explains how this potent fusion helped build the contemporary American state. Since that time efforts to reinvent government by "brains trust" have largely failed in the U.S. In the last quarter of the twentieth century American politics ceased to function as a blend of broad coalition building and reform agenda setting, rooted in a consensus of belief in the efficacy of modern government. Can a progressive coalition of ideas and power come together again? The Fall of the House of Roosevelt makes such a prospect both alluring and daunting.

A comprehensive history of the people and cases that have changed history, this is the definitive account of the nation's highest court featuring a forward by Howard Zinn Recent changes in the Supreme Court have placed the venerable institution at the forefront of current affairs, making this comprehensive and engaging work as timely as ever. In the tradition of Howard Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States, Peter Irons chronicles the decisions that have influenced virtually every aspect of our society, from the debates over judicial power to controversial rulings in the past regarding slavery, racial segregation, and abortion, as well as more current cases about school prayer, the Bush/Gore election results, and "enemy combatants." To understand key issues facing the supreme court and the current battle for the court's ideological makeup, there is no better guide than Peter Irons. This revised and updated edition includes a foreword by Howard Zinn. "A sophisticated narrative history of the Supreme Court . . . [Irons] breathes abundant life into old documents and reminds readers that today's fiercest arguments about rights are the continuation of the endless American conversation." -Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

For more than two centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided a battleground for nearly every controversial issue in our nations history. This veteran team of talented historians produces the most readable, astute, and up-to-date single-volume history of this venerated institution.

The Supreme Court in United States History is a three-volume history of the U.S. Supreme Court, detailing its establishment, the major cases reviewed and decided by the Court, the historical events surrounding cases and decisions, and the effects that Supreme Court decisions had on the public. Author Charles Warren often references newspaper and magazine articles and letters in an attempt to capture the spirit of the times. Written with one eye on the Court and one eye on people, The Supreme Court in United States History was "an attempt to revivify the important cases decided by the Court and to picture the Court itself from year to year in its contemporary setting." Volume II describes Supreme Court History from 1821-1855, including International and Constitutional law, Judiciary Reform, the Steamboat Monopoly Case, Virginia and Kentucky vs. the Supreme Court, the Cherokee cases, the rule of Chief Justices Marshall and Taney, and Slavery. CHARLES WARREN (1868-1954) was an American legal historian and lawyer. Warren graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School, and received his Doctorate from Columbia University. In 1894, he founded the Immigration Restriction League with fellow Harvard graduates Prescott Hall and Robert DeCourcy Ward. He authored several legal history books, including A History of the American Bar, The Supreme Court in United States History, and The Making of the Constitution, and won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1923. Warren was the Assistant Attorney General from 1914 to 1918 during Woodrow Wilson's Presidency and drafted the Espionage Act of 1917.