An instant New York Times bestseller: An acclaimed legal scholar's important (New York Times) and fascinating (Economist) exposé of how the Supreme Court uses unsigned and unexplained orders to change the law behind closed doors.

The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. But since 2017, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes shadow docket, regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, through cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers--and citizens--scrambling.  

The Court's conservative majority has used the shadow docket to green-light restrictive voting laws and bans on abortion, and to curtail immigration and COVID vaccine mandates. But Americans of all political stripes should be worried about what the shadow docket portends for the rule of law, argues Supreme Court expert Stephen Vladeck. In this rigorous yet accessible book, he issues an urgent call to bring the Court back into the light. Updated with a new preface, The Shadow Docket is an essential read for understanding the inner workings of the Supreme Court--and American democracy. 

At some point, everyone living in the United States has some type of interaction with the American judicial system. For most, this contact is relatively minor: contesting a traffic ticket, suing or being sued in civil court, being a witness in a civil or criminal trial, or serving on a jury. Others are caught up in the criminal justice system - as defendants, as victims, as witnesses, as jurors, or as relatives of a victim or a defendant. For still others, contact comes via an important policy issue affecting their lives in the hands of judges and justices sitting in judgment in marble temples to the law. Yet whatever the level of contact, the American judicial system affects peoples' lives. What courts and judges do matters.

This book provides a very short, but complete introduction to the institutions and people, the rules and processes, that make up the American judicial system. Jargon free and aimed at a general reader, this Very Short Introduction explains the 'where, ' 'when, ' and 'who' of American courts. It also makes clear the 'how' and 'why' behind the law as it affects everyday people. It is, in a word, a starting place to understanding the third branch of American government at both the state and federal levels; a guide to those wishing to know the basics of the American judicial system; and a cogent synthesis of how the various elements that make up the law and legal institutions fit together.

A timely and lively summary and analysis of the Supreme Court's justifications for overruling nearly 300 prior rulings in its history

An audacious US Supreme Court is overturning a number of long-standing precedents, and Overturned offers a lively account of the court's history of overturning prior cases and examples and analyses of 300 cases overruled in its history.

The immense controversy surrounding the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022, which overruled Roe v. Wade and erased the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, has focused public attention on how and why the Supreme Court knocks down long-established precedents.

In his vivid and accessible style, scholar Clarke Rountree recounts the rhetorical pirouettes and linguistic acrobatics the court has deployed to explain its reversal of Dobbs and numerous other landmark decisions. He reviews strategies the court uses to undermine a previous court's standing without undermining its own. He analyzes overrulings across time, by type (constitutional cases versus statutory and common law cases), by the ages of the overturned precedents, with changes in the court's membership, and through other variables.

Rountree gives engrossing accounts of pivotal overrulings in the past, such as when Lincoln's Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase used the Legal Tender Act in 1862 to raise money for the Civil War then ruled the same law unconstitutional in 1870 when he served as chief justice. Rountree retells Thomas Edison's attempt to monopolize the burgeoning film industry, which was stopped only when the Supreme Court overturned an earlier patent-rights case in 1917. Finally, Rountree applies his myriad insights to the politically fraught Dobbs case.

Overturned makes a valuable contribution to law, rhetoric, politics, and history, and readers interested in the role and function of America's highest court will find Rountree's account fast-paced, lively, and engaging.

We all feel unfairness deeply when treated in rash ways. We expect, and the law requires, government officials to take fairness seriously, giving us notice and an opportunity to be heard before taking our rights away. That is why the U.S. Constitution commands, twice, that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Yet, in overheated debates, people argue that others do not deserve any presumption of innocence. In courtrooms and colleges, police stations and jails, restaurants and libraries, print and online, the democratic value of due process is up for grabs.

Why is due process under so much pressure? Brandon Garrett exposes widening fault lines. One division lies within our own attitudes, and he explores why we are tempted to put desired outcomes before fair process. Another lies in government, as judges adopt toothless due process rules. People are trapped in debt for unpaid traffic fines; sheriffs seize and forfeit belongings; algorithms suspend teachers' employment; officials use flawed data to cancel healthcare; and magistrates order arrestees to be jailed because they cannot pay cash bail. Meanwhile, the rise of AI threatens what remains of due process with black-box technology.

To fight against such unfairness, lawyers try to challenge unjust systems, researchers demonstrate why such processes are so counterproductive, and lawmakers try to enact new protections. Common ground matters now more than ever to mend political polarization, cool simmering distrust of government, prevent injudicious errors, and safeguard constitutional rights. A revival of due process is long overdue.

A sitting justice reflects upon the authority of the Supreme Court--how that authority was gained and how measures to restructure the Court could undermine both the Court and the constitutional system of checks and balances that depends on it.

A growing chorus of officials and commentators argues that the Supreme Court has become too political. On this view the confirmation process is just an exercise in partisan agenda-setting, and the jurists are no more than politicians in robes--their ostensibly neutral judicial philosophies mere camouflage for conservative or liberal convictions.

Stephen Breyer, drawing upon his experience as a Supreme Court justice, sounds a cautionary note. Mindful of the Court's history, he suggests that the judiciary's hard-won authority could be marred by reforms premised on the assumption of ideological bias. Having, as Hamilton observed, no influence over either the sword or the purse, the Court earned its authority by making decisions that have, over time, increased the public's trust. If public trust is now in decline, one part of the solution is to promote better understandings of how the judiciary actually works: how judges adhere to their oaths and how they try to avoid considerations of politics and popularity.

Breyer warns that political intervention could itself further erode public trust. Without the public's trust, the Court would no longer be able to act as a check on the other branches of government or as a guarantor of the rule of law, risking serious harm to our constitutional system.

A timely and lively summary and analysis of the Supreme Court's justifications for overruling nearly 300 prior rulings in its history

A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Richard A. Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases. When conventional legal materials enable judges to ascertain the true facts of a case and apply clear pre-existing legal rules to them, Posner argues, they do so straightforwardly; that is the domain of legalist reasoning. However, in non-routine cases, the conventional materials run out and judges are on their own, navigating uncharted seas with equipment consisting of experience, emotions, and often unconscious beliefs. In doing so, they take on a legislative role, though one that is confined by internal and external constraints, such as professional ethics, opinions of respected colleagues, and limitations imposed by other branches of government on freewheeling judicial discretion. Occasional legislators, judges are motivated by political considerations in a broad and sometimes a narrow sense of that term. In that open area, most American judges are legal pragmatists. Legal pragmatism is forward-looking and policy-based. It focuses on the consequences of a decision in both the short and the long term, rather than on its antecedent logic. Legal pragmatism so understood is really just a form of ordinary practical reasoning, rather than some special kind of legal reasoning.

Supreme Court justices are uniquely free from the constraints on ordinary judges and uniquely tempted to engage in legislative forms of adjudication. More than any other court, the Supreme Court is best understood as a political court.

The Supreme Court's October 2023 Term was filled with blockbuster decisions that will have a dramatic effect on the law and on people's lives. The Court created broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken by a president, dramatically limited the power of federal administrative agencies, clarified the meaning of the Second Amendment, and empowered cities to use the criminal law against the unhoused. This concise book reviews the key decisions of October Term 2022 and their implications.

The idea that wealthy people use their money to influence things, including politics, law, and media will surprise very few people. However, as Michael S. Kang and Joanna Shepherd argue in this readable and rich study of the state judiciary, the effect of money on judicial outcomes should disturb and anger everyone. In the current system that elects state judges, the rich and powerful can spend money to elect and re-elect judges who decide cases the way they want. Free to Judge is about how and why money increasingly affects the dispensation of justice in our legal system, and what can be done to stop it.

One of the barriers to action in the past has been an inability to prove that campaign donations influence state judicial decision-making. In this book, Kang and Shepherd answer that challenge for the first time, with a rigorous empirical study of campaign finance and judicial decision-making data. Pairing this with interviews of past and present judges, they create a compelling and persuasive account of people like Marsha Ternus, the first Iowa state supreme court justice to be voted out of office after her decision in a same-sex marriage case. The threat of such an outcome, and the desire to win reelection, results in judges demonstrably leaning towards the interests and preferences of their campaign donors across all cases.

Free to Judge is thus able to identify the pieces of our current system that invite bias, such as judicial reelection, and what reforms should focus on. This thoughtful and compellingly written book will be required reading for anybody who cares about creating a more just legal system.

This book presents an empirical analysis of the UK Supreme Court's output over its first ten years, with a specific focus on each individual judge's contribution to each case.It shows that judges, like all of us, are human; it would be difficult to imagine that any of us, even in our most professional capacity, could act completely independently of our predilections, motivations and biases. The same is true for the judges sitting on the UK's highest court.

Drawing on insights from a bespoke dataset of judgments, this work discerns trends and tendencies across each judge's voting patterns and the reasoning they adopt when disposing of cases. It not only highlights areas of divergence, but also shows how each of the judges tended to vote in different contexts, including which were more likely to overturn appeals from lower courts, side with certain parties such as the state or underdogs, and find liability in various areas (tort, contract, criminal, EU, immigration and tax law, with a special focus on human rights cases). Another section illustrates the differences between the judges when it comes to judicial reasoning, such as their approach to precedent and preferred methods of statutory interpretation.

This work shows that different judges exercise their power in different ways. Some are more comfortable with pushing boundaries whilst others are more restrained. Some grant the state a lot of leeway whilst others apply heavy scrutiny. Some are, as Lord Denning suggested, 'bold spirits' whilst others are 'timorous souls'. It shows, at least when it comes to the Supreme Court, that it matters who our judges are.

The Serpent Power is an important and influential text for the modern practice of Kundalini yoga in the West. Written by Sir John George Woodroffe, under his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, it is a scholarly and insightful study of both ancient texts and the philosophies of Kundalini, Shakti, meditation, and yogic practice. Woodroffe was born in Calcutta, India and followed in his father's footsteps in a successful legal career that included many years serving as the Chief Justice on the High Court of India. In addition to his professional judicial duties he also extensively studied Hindu philosophy and translated many Sanskrit texts. He wrote many books on Tantrism and yoga under his pseudonym and was a noted speaker and expert on Indian philosophy. The Serpent Power is his most popular and enduring work and is notable for its accurate and nuanced translations of two important ancient Tantric texts: The Description of the Six Chakras and Five-fold Footstool. This classic text remains an important guide for all of those who are interested in Kundalini yoga as well as ancient Hindu philosophy and meditative practices. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

The government has no power greater than to take away a person's freedom or even life. We trust our judges to balance justice and mercy to arrive at an appropriate sentence when a person has been convicted of a crime. Yet to a large extent, how a judge goes about this process is invisible to the lawyers in a case, the public, and even to the criminal defendant being sentenced. To be sure, judges often give reasons for their sentences, such as explaining when their sentence is dictated by a statute requiring a mandatory minimum sentence or how the punish-ment fits under the sentencing guidelines. But the human dimension of this - how a judge actually balances justice and mercy, what a judge feels in putting a person in prison for a long time or condemning a person to death - is rarely publicly explored.

Judge Frederic Block, a long-time federal district court judge, has written a book which describes the experience of a human being punishing other human beings. Judge Block does this by telling the stories of some of the cases that he has handled since coming on the bench in 1994. Each of the cases is compelling and Judge Block is a great storyteller. Each evokes important issues concerning our criminal justice system. Judge Block is candid in sharing his thinking and his feelings as he approached imposing punishments in these instances. He is remarkably self-reflective, often describing his concerns that his religion or the unfounded accusations against him or his recent reading might be unduly influencing the sentences he is imposing. Along the way, he tells us a lot about the workings of the federal courts and also about his life.

This is a book that can be enjoyed simply for its stories and its humanity. It is about the crimes people commit and what a judge considers in punishing them. It is accessible to lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

The Tyrannical Rule of The U.S. Supreme Court clearly shows how the Court has become a tyrannical ruler of the country.

It indicates what our founders intended for the U.S. Supreme Court and how it has abused the political science principles of a Republic. It will show how the founders' intent has been distorted in a historical way by the Court in constitutional case interpretations of the Constitution.

The book points out how the Court misinterpreted its provisions or created words and phrases not in that document to justify its decisions. It shows how the Court has changed social policy without a vote of the people causing citizens to believe the Court is their ruler rather than the legislators they elected in Congress. You will see how the Court has become a tyrannical ruler of the country.

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, by the way it has invented words and phrases not in the Constitution to justify its decisions, has violated the Constitution itself.

Phrases like the right to privacy and now a right to dignity have been invented to mold social changes as the Court desires when those terms are nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

In this book you will find these issues and others of importance to all Americans discussed. Is the Court, the third branch of the federal government and meant to be the weakest of the three, fulfilling its duties and functions as envisioned by those who drafted our Constitution and those citizens who ratified it? Is it time for change?

The future of our country is in your hands!

Invisible Lives chronicles cycles of dysfunction and domestic violence. Using experimental hybrid poetry, Cristalle Smith breaks generational silence in lyric resonance, reflecting on a childhood rife with upheaval and poverty, the invisibility of single motherhood, and the silence of domestic violence. These poems sing memory across divides of time and space, breaking the patterns of absence and denial and challenging what is kept unseen.

Associative leaps chronicle the daughter of a family always on the move. Family secrets thaw in spring mud. Invisible Lives delivers poetic meditations collaged with pop culture and impossibly colliding landscapes. The prairies of Alberta collapse into the sinkholes of northern Florida in a cacophony of lyric layering.

Smith's fierce and electric voice breaks taboos and challenges the status quo. She sings poor and working class lives, young lives, the lives of mothers, grandmothers, and daughters, the lives of veterans, lives that have endured layers of intersecting trauma and violence. Invisible Lives is an interrogation of power and intimacy that gives a new voice to the people who survive.

Since the first edition of this popular text was published in 1984, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has transformed the role of the courts in Canadian politics. Addressing current controversies - including the invocation of the federal Emergencies Act, the fallout from the Supreme Court's Greenhouse Gas References, and the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Russell Brown - Law, Politics, and the Judicial Process in Canada, 5th Edition offers ten updated chapters, all-new chapter introductions, and over two dozen new readings addressing current issues Canadian law and politics. It engages with multiple perspectives on controversial issues, juxtaposing competing perspectives to foster debate.

Taking a critical approach to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the growth of judicial power, editors F.L. Morton and Dave Snow provide an even-handed examination of the institutional implications of an increasingly-important Supreme Court of Canada. Law, Politics, and the Judicial Process in Canada, 5th Edition is the leading source for students, and all readers, interested in judicial power in Canada.

Since the first edition of this popular text was published in 1984, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has transformed the role of the courts in Canadian politics. Addressing current controversies - including the invocation of the federal Emergencies Act, the fallout from the Supreme Court's Greenhouse Gas References, and the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Russell Brown - Law, Politics, and the Judicial Process in Canada, 5th Edition offers ten updated chapters, all-new chapter introductions, and over two dozen new readings addressing current issues Canadian law and politics. It engages with multiple perspectives on controversial issues, juxtaposing competing perspectives to foster debate.

Taking a critical approach to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the growth of judicial power, editors F.L. Morton and Dave Snow provide an even-handed examination of the institutional implications of an increasingly-important Supreme Court of Canada. Law, Politics, and the Judicial Process in Canada, 5th Edition is the leading source for students, and all readers, interested in judicial power in Canada.

The Foreword of this book was written by attorney William R. Gallagher of Cincinnati. Mr. Gallagher won the Robert C. Heeney Award, in 2011, from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Washington, D.C. That award is given to one criminal defense attorney per year who best exemplifies the motto of the Association as Liberties Last Champion. In his Foreword, Mr. Gallagher states this book talks about things attorneys will only discuss among themselves in the corner of a cocktail party. Mr. Gallagher is considered to be one of the top three criminal trial attorneys East of the Mississippi River.

System Failure: A Critique of the Judicial System of the United States, has been included in the Moritz Law Library at the Ohio State University School of Law and in the Schaefer Law Library at Michigan State University. It is also now in the Ohio Public Library system.

This book has been included in the curriculum of Law Professor Lester C. Reams's Business Law class at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles, in the portion of the class discussing Criminal Law and Social Justice. Professor Reams has stated he is assigning the book to his students and asking them how, from a Business Law viewpoint, they would reform the judicial system in light of the information in this book. In Professor Reams's review of System Failure, he referred to the book as brilliant.

A former 30 year member of the Central Legal Staff at the United States Military Court of Appeals has called portions of the book genius.

The book made it to Book Authority's Best New Civil Rights Law Books: https: //bookauthority.org/books/new-civil-rights-law-books?t=t7lbkd&s=award&book=B08H4Q4NN3 BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world.

System Failure is a Critique of the US Judicial System as seen through the eyes of a 25 year practicing jailhouse lawyer, who eventually freed himself from a wrongful conviction.

The book discloses why the average time between a wrongful conviction and exoneration is 9 1/2 years. Using empirical data and publicly known facts, it advances credible numbers of wrongfully imprisoned citizens in the US in excess of 100,000.

The book brings to light a systemic violation of Article III of the Constitution by using data from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, to prove young law clerks are deciding most of the cases in the Federal Courts, and proposes changes to the way in which jurisdictions are created to resolve that problem.

The author was considered to be the best jailhouse lawyer in the Ohio prison system for over 20 years. Although the author did mostly criminal appeals and Habeas Corpus work, he also initiated a lawsuit against Ohio, with the assistance of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center in Cincinnati, against Ohio for refusing to treat prisoners for Hepatitis C, brought on the behalf of two friends of his.That lawsuit, Fussell v. Wilkinson, turned into a major medical/dental Class Action that has cost the State of Ohio $100 million per year since its inception in 2003.

In the pages of this book, you will find a man who taught himself the law from scratch, motivated by having been wrongfully convicted, and fought a 25 year war with the judicial system on the behalf of other Lifers who were his friends. The author spent 4 years at Warren Correctional Institution, under the control of one of the best prison Wardens to ever exist, Anthony Brigano; 2 years at Chillicothe Correctional Institution, before his first reversal; 4 years at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville; 5 years at Lebanon Correctional Institution and 10 years at Allen Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio. Luke and Leb ain't no joke. The above only scratches the surface of this book.

Come walk a mile in my shoes.

James F. Love IV

Starting in the 1970s, conservatives learned that electoral victory did not easily convert into a reversal of important liberal accomplishments, especially in the law. As a result, conservatives' mobilizing efforts increasingly turned to law schools, professional networks, public interest groups, and the judiciary--areas traditionally controlled by liberals. Drawing from internal documents, as well as interviews with key conservative figures, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement examines this sometimes fitful, and still only partially successful, conservative challenge to liberal domination of the law and American legal institutions.

Unlike accounts that depict the conservatives as fiendishly skilled, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement reveals the formidable challenges that conservatives faced in competing with legal liberalism. Steven Teles explores how conservative mobilization was shaped by the legal profession, the legacy of the liberal movement, and the difficulties in matching strategic opportunities with effective organizational responses. He explains how foundations and groups promoting conservative ideas built a network designed to dislodge legal liberalism from American elite institutions. And he portrays the reality, not of a grand strategy masterfully pursued, but of individuals and political entrepreneurs learning from trial and error.

Using previously unavailable materials from the Olin Foundation, Federalist Society, Center for Individual Rights, Institute for Justice, and Law and Economics Center, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement provides an unprecedented look at the inner life of the conservative movement. Lawyers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, and activists seeking to learn from the conservative experience in the law will find it compelling reading.

This revised and updated edition looks at the future of the Canadian legal and political systems as they relate to this country's indigenous communities.

During John Reilly's more than 30-year career with the Provincial Court of Alberta he became interested in how the Canadian judicial system dealt with Indigenous societies. He saw the failure of the white legal system to do justice for First Nation peoples, the harm caused to them by Canadian colonialism, and the failure of all levels of government, including tribal leadership, to alleviate their suffering and deal with the conflicting natures of European-style law and Indigenous tradition and circumstance.

As a result, Judge Reilly vowed to improve the delivery of justice to the Indigenous people in his community, and he used his perceived power as a jurist to positively influence their lives. Along the way he came into direct conflict with Canadian judicial administration and various questionable leaders among the echelons of both Canadian and First Nation governments. With the latest news and updates related to the ongoing struggle, Bad Judgment tells the story of this conflict and the impact it had upon Reilly's opinion of his country, his chosen profession and the future of Indigenous justice in Canada.

In this seminal work, Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo offers an in-depth exploration of the judicial decision-making process. Drawing from his own experience on the bench, Cardozo examines how judges interpret laws, the influence of precedent, and the balance between logic, history, and social considerations in shaping legal outcomes. This book remains a foundational text in understanding the philosophy and methodology behind judicial reasoning and the role of the judiciary in society.