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5 books match the query 'United States Supreme Court'
Case Selection in the United States Supreme Court
Doris Marie Provine
University of Chicago Press, 1980
This concise and accessible study provides an intimate view of the Court's case-selection process through an analysis of the docket books and other papers of Justice Harold H. Burton, who kept scrupulous records of the Court's work from 1945 to 1957. In her analysis of these invaluable records—the only records of case-selection votes made public since the advent of discretionary review in 1925—Provine provides two perspectives on the problematic issue of judicial motivation in case selection. The first perspective is an institutional one in which the Court is treated as the unit of analysis: the second is personal, in which differences among decision makers are the focus of analysis. Provine suggests that judicial role perceptions go far to explain both agreement and disagreement in case selection. She also considers the impact of the process upon litigants, since the system seems to favor petitioners with litigation expertise, especially the U.S. government. Yet, she claims, the secrecy of case selection fosters the popular misperception that any worthwhile case can be appealed "all the way to the Supreme Court." The Court thus maintains its image as a forum equally available to all litigants.
Inconsistency and Indecision in the United States Supreme Court
Matthew P. Hitt
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Yet a Court that prioritizes resolving many disputes will at times produce contradictory sets of opinions or fail to provide a rationale and legal precedent for its decision at all. In either case, it produces an unreasoned judgment. Conversely, a Court that prioritizes logically consistent doctrine will fail to resolve many underlying disputes in law and society. Inconsistency and Indecision in the United States Supreme Court demonstrates that over time, institutional changes, lobbied for by the justices, substantially reduced unreasoned judgments in the Court’s output, coinciding with a reduction in the Court’s caseload. Hence, the Supreme Court historically emphasized the first goal of dispute resolution, but evolved into a Court that prioritizes the second goal of logically consistent doctrine. As a result, the Court today fails to resolve more underlying questions in law and society in order to minimize criticism of its output from other elites. In so doing, the modern Court often fails to live up to its Constitutional obligation.
Overturned
The Rhetoric of Overruling in the United States Supreme CourtClarke Rountree
University of Alabama Press, 2025
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.
The Foundational Role of the United States Supreme Court
Reinforcing Legitimacy Through Internal ReformTessa van Buchem
Central European University Press, 2027
The Foundational Role of the United States Supreme Court
Reinforcing Legitimacy Through Internal ReformTessa van Buchem
Central European University Press, 2027