The Rehnquist Court; Judicial Activism on the Right

New York: Hill and Wang, 2002. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. x, 276 pages. Notes. Index. Date in ink on fep. Inscriptions on fep signed by Herman Schwartz and Bill Taylor. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Herman Schwartz is a professor in the Washington College of Law at American University, Washington, D.C. Throughout a long career in academia, publishing and community service, he has focused his attention and the world's on issues of civil rights and civil liberties. He has worked with the United Nations, the human rights advocacy group Helsinki Watch, the U.S./Israel Civil Liberties Law Program, the ACLU Prison Project, Washington College of Law's Human Rights Center and other organizations. He was awarded the 2006 Champion of Justice Award by the Alliance for Justice. He has served as an adviser to numerous Central and Eastern European nations, as well as former Soviet Union nations, on constitutional and human rights reform; recently he has been called up on to comment and advise on constitutional reform in Afghanistan, Iraq and several African countries. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of the Open Society Institute Justice Initiative. For nearly all his tenure as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist has enjoyed the support of a slim but usually solid majority of his fellow justices. With it he has been able to effect a dramatic shift to the right in many vital areas of constitutional law. Displaying a judicial activism not seen since the 1930s, Rehnquist and his allies, in a series of 5-4 decisions, have undermined civil rights and weakened the federal government's ability to respond to social needs. As the Rehnquist court concluded its fifteenth term, constitutional authority Herman Schwartz has assembled seventeen distinguished legal scholars to evaluate its record on the many controversial issues that have come before it. Among them are Stephen Bright on capital punishment, Charles Ogletree on criminal procedure, Norman Redlich on religion, Allan Morrison and David Vladeck on regulation, and John Mackenzie on Bush v. Gore. The book concludes with a reflection on Rehnquist's legacy by Tom Wicker.