Dissent and the Supreme Court
Its Role in the Court's History and the Nation's Constitutional Dialogue
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Highly illuminating ... for anyone interested in the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the American democracy, lawyer and layperson alike." —The Los Angeles Review of Books
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Well into the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court issued unanimous single opinions in over 90% of its cases. By 1952, only 22% of the Court's opinions were unanimous, a division that continues today. Critics contend that lack of unanimity leads to legal uncertainty and undermines the Court's institutional authority. Urofsky (Louis D. Brandeis), however, disagrees, writing that while the vast majority of dissents are forgotten, a select few prove "canonical or prophetic." To take one significant example, John Marshall Harlan's lone dissent against the "separate but equal" Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruling eventually carried the day in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), when the Court unanimously struck down racial segregation in public education. Another famous dissent was by Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States (1928), where the majority ruled that a warrantless wiretap did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Brandeis's opinion in favor of a constitutional right of privacy "the right to be let alone" eventually prevailed and now forms the foundation of the Court's search-and-seizure jurisprudence. For students of the law, in school or out, with a keen interest in Supreme Court history, this book offers a welcome perspective on a vibrant, ongoing constitutional dialogue.
