The History of the Supreme Court of the United States

Placing the decisions of the Supreme Court under Justice Fuller in their historical context.

Owen M. Fiss (Author)

9780521860277, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 May 2006

446 pages
24 x 16.3 x 3.7 cm, 0.801 kg

A highly interpretive and eminently readable study of the Supreme Court during the period in which Melvin Fuller was Chief Justice, offering a complete account of the cases the Court saw during one of the most tumultuous times in U.S. history. The legacy of the Supreme Court at the turn of the century has largely been negative: decisions such as Lochner v. New York (1905), Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), In re Debs (1895), and Plessy v. Ferguson have been seen by subsequent generations of lawyers and judges as embodying a judicial method and philosophy that should be avoided at all costs. This book places these decisions in their historical context. It rejects the crude instrumental interpretation of these decisions and explains them as the expression of a conception of liberty that has its roots in the founding of the nation.

Part I. The Legacy of Negative Examples: 1. Legitimacy and history
2. The identity of the institution
Part II. Class Conflict and the Supreme Court: 3. Debs and the maintenance of public order
4. Pollock - the redistributive function denied
Part III. The Response to Progressivism: 5. The Antitrust campaign
6. Labor legislation and the theory of Lochner
7. Rate regulation: the assault on Munn v. Illinois
Part IV. The Concept of the Nation: 8. The American empire?
9. Federalism and liberty
Part V. Liberty Dishonored: 10. The Chinese cases: citizenship and the claims of procedure
11. The early free speech cases
12. Plessy, alas
13. The end of a tradition?

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]