Radicals in Robes; Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America

Sunstein, Cass R.

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Language: English

Published by Basic Books, Cambridge, MA, 2005

0465083269 / 9780465083268

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xv, [3], 281, [5] pages. Notes. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling, and small crease in front DJ flap. Cass Robert Sunstein FBA (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics. He is also The New York Times best-selling author of The World According to Star Wars (2016) and Nudge (2008). He was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012. As a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for 27 years, he wrote influential works on regulatory and constitutional law, among other topics. Since leaving the White House, Sunstein has been the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. Studies of legal publications found Sunstein to be the most frequently cited American legal scholar by a wide margin. Contributing to the anthology Our American Story (2019), Sunstein addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. He cited the concepts of self-government and equal dignity of human beings, but focused in particular on stories: "an emphasis on what happened before and after the shots in Concord and the courageous response of the embattled farmers maintains continuity with the historical facts and offers us something on which we can build." Sunstein is a contributing editor to The New Republic and The American Prospect and is a frequent witness before congressional committees. He played an active role in opposing the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998. Derived from a Kirkus review: Attempting to support his view of how life would degrade under the sway of extreme right-wing judges, Sunstein presents a surprisingly balanced history of constitutional law. Sunstein warns that legal fundamentalists, who interpret the Constitution according to the "original understanding," that is, how the framers and ratifiers conceived it, would deprive us of many of the freedoms and protections that we now take for granted. Fundamentalist courts would, for example, overturn Roe v. Wade on the basis that the Constitution does not protect privacy, strike as unconstitutional key provisions of anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Act and environmental safeguards such as the Clean Air Act, permit states to bar women from practicing as doctors or lawyers, declare even modest gun control laws invalid, scale back the rights of the accused, shield commercial advertising from government regulation and poke giant doorways in the wall that separates church and state. In fact, states could establish official religions. Sunstein's most compelling argument against fundamentalism is that the framers and ratifiers were only human, so the Constitution can't be perfect. Sunstein, however, does not establish a strong one-to-one correspondence between fundamentalism and extreme right-wing politics, other than to say that Justice Antonin Scalia, the most conservative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, is a fundamentalist. Not until near the end does he state, without much support, "The constitutional judgments of fundamentalists are eerily close to the political judgments of conservative politicians." His evidence that courts are generally shifting to the extreme right is also weak. Sunstein promotes a minimalist approach to constitutional law, which allows that it's okay to nudge the law carefully in one direction or another (right or left) with incremental decisions, rather than overreach, as he believes the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade. Enlightening and in some places fascinating. …

Seller Inventory # 81477

Title
Radicals in Robes; Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America
Author
Sunstein, Cass R.
Publisher
Basic Books, Cambridge, MA
Publication year
2005
Condition
Very good
Dust jacket
Very good
Binding
Hardcover
Language
English
ISBN 10
0465083269
ISBN 13
9780465083268
Illustrator
Den Dry (Author photograph)
Edition
First Printing [Stated].
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Ground Zero Books, Ltd.

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