We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court

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Oxford University Press, 2001 M11 8 - 286 páginas
Several of the most divisive moral conflicts that have beset Americans in the period since World War II have been transmuted into constitutional conflicts and resolved as such. In his new book, eminent legal scholar Michael Perry evaluates the grave charge that the modern Supreme Court has engineered a "judicial usurpation of politics." In particular, Perry inquires which of several major Fourteenth Amendment conflicts--over race segregation, race-based affirmative action, sex-based discrimination, homosexuality, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide--have been resolved as they should have been. He lays the necessary groundwork for his inquiry by addressing questions of both constitutional theory and constitutional history. A clear-eyed examination of some of the perennial controversies in American life, We the People is a major contribution to modern constitutional studies.

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Contenido

The Judicial Usurpation of Politics
3
2 What Is the Constitution? And Other Fundamental Questions
15
What Norms Did We the People Establish?
48
Segregation and Affirmative Action
88
Sex and Sexual Orientation
117
Abortion and PhysicianAssisted Suicide
151
7 Concluding Reflections
180
Notes
187
Index
259
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Página 100 - States to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.
Página 51 - That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States...
Página 32 - Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
Página 2 - Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Página 39 - At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
Página 155 - Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child...
Página 55 - ... the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly -made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.
Página 198 - All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.
Página 100 - Territory in the United States to make and enforce contracts; to sue, be parties, and give evidence ; to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property...

Acerca del autor (2001)

Michael J. Perry holds the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University. From 1982 to 1997, he taught at the Northwestern University School of Law, where he held the Howard J. Trienens Chair in Law. Perry is the author of several books, including The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries (Oxford, 1998), Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives (Oxford, 1997), The Constitution in the Courts: Law or Politics? (Oxford, 1994), and Love and Power: The Role of Religion and Morality in American Politics (Oxford, 1991).

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