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This up-to-date history of Roe v. Wade covers the complete social and legal context of the case that remains the touchstone for America's culture wars.

The history of the court battle over the right of interracial marriage which overturned discriminatory state laws and the precedent's value in the case for same-sex marriage.

The story of how Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster James Dale's decision to come out as a gay man led to a historic Supreme Court case.

A clear and candid account of one of the worst failures of civil rights in our nation's history, this book focuses on the four Supreme Court cases involving Japanese Americans who were forcibly detained and relocated to internment camps in the early months of World War II.

An examination of the landmark 1957 Supreme Court case Roth v. United States, which for the first time attempted to define what constitutes obscenity in American life and law. Explores this problematic ruling within the broad sweep of American social and legal history.

In its controversial Bakke decision of 1978, the Supreme Court upheld racial and ethnic diversity in university admissions. This book follows the twists and turns of the district and appellate cases. It aims to reveal the story of how Justice O'Connor joined her liberal colleagues to uphold the use of race in university admissions.

The 1978 decision in TVA v Hill, the Court's first decision interpreting the Endangered Species Act, remains one of the most instructive cases in American environmental law. This work reveals that the snail darter case was just one part of a long struggle over whether the TVA should build the Tellico Dam.

By presenting a picture of the pro-Southern justices on the Court, this work offers readers an understanding of how they came to their opinions, even as they failed to anticipate the impact their decision would have - a miscalculation that to some degree undermined the Court's power and authority within the American political system.

Does the Constitution protect children from violent parents? This book discusses domestic relations, child abuse, and the responsibilities - and limits - of state action regarding the private lives of citizens. It helps readers understand how considerations of ""what should be"" are not always reflected in legal reasoning.

When Arthur Gochman filed a class-action suit in 1968 on behalf of San Antonio school children, he argued that quality education was a constitutional right and a district court agreed. But the Supreme Court overruled that decision. This book assesses the impact of this decision and provides an account of the legal maneuvering of the two sides.

Recounts how the cashier of the Baltimore branch of the Second Bank of the US refused to pay Maryland's tax on the bank and how that act precipitated a showdown in the Supreme Court. This book provides a virtual constitutional history of the first fifty years of the nation.

Dollree Mapp defied a predominantly white police force by challenging the legality of its search-and-seizure methods. This work follows the police raid into her home and chronicles the events that led to the Court's 5-4 ruling in Mapp v Ohio, which redefined the rights of the accused and set limits on how police could obtain and use evidence.

Augustus Cochran reexamines the origins, contexts, and impact of the decision that the creation of a ""hostile work environment"" through sexual harassment was a form of sex discrimination and introduces readers to the main actors in the case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986).

Howard Ball examines the landmark case of the U.S. v. Price in 1967. Following the failure of the Mississippi authorities to indict members of the KKK for a racist murder, the federal government successfully appealed to the Supreme Court and established federal jurisdiction over civil rights violations.

In 1993-2001, three cases in North Carolina went before the Supreme Court to decide how far a state could establish voting districts along racial lines. This text explores how the Court addressed the constitutionality of redistricting within the contexts of civil rights and partisan politics.

A study of the power of the American Supreme Court to interpret laws and overrule any found in conflict with the Constitution. It examines the landmark case of Marbury versus Madison (1803), when that power of judicial review was first fully articulated.

The history of voting rights in America is marked by dogged progress against persistent prejudice toward an expanding inclusiveness. The Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright is a crucial chapter in that story and marked a turning point for the civil rights movement. Charles Zelden's retelling of this episode reveals why.

Tracing the litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the NAACP, and including incisive portraits of key players, this book simply but powerfully shows that "Brown" not only changed the national equation of race and caste, it also changed our view of the Court's role in American life.

The Santeria religion of Cuba - the Way of the Saints - mixes West African Yoruba culture with Catholicism. Similar to Haitian voodoo, Santeria has long practiced animal sacrifice in certain rites. Here, David O'Brien illuminates this controversy and its significance for law, government, and religion in America.

Nally v. Grace Community Church of the Valley was America's first case to allege ""clergy malpractice,"" one that challenged the freedom of religious leaders to counsel their parishioners. The case is as much a story of modern America as it is an account of courtroom proceedings.

The Supreme Court's controversial decision in Oregon v. Smith sharply departed from previous readings of the First Amendment's religious freedom clause and ignited a firestorm of protest. This analysis of the case shows why it continues to resonate so deeply in the American psyche.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Louis Fisher analyzes the case of eight Germans who landed in the USA in 1942 bent on sabotage. Caught before they could carry out their missions, they were hauled before a secret military tribunal and found guilty. Six of the men were put to death.

Aaron Burr was an enigma even in his own day. Founding father and vice president, he engaged in a duel with Alexander Hamilton resulting in a murder indictment that effectively ended his legal career. This book unveils a cast of characters ensnared by politics and law at the highest levels of government.

It has become known to many as the moment when the US Supreme Court kicked God out of the public schools, supposedly paving the way for a decline in educational quality and a dramatic rise in delinquency and immorality. This book helps readers understand why Americans remain divided on how divided church and state should be.

When the US took control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam following the Spanish-American War, it was unclear to what degree these islands were actually part of the US. By looking at what became known as the Insular Cases, this work reveals how America resolved to govern these territories.

This volume reexamines the events and personalities in the 1894 strike when the American Railway Union took action against the Pullman Palace Car Company. It also looks at related proceedings in the Chicago trial courts, and the decision which set important standards for labour injunctions.

Focuses on the antebellum Supreme Court's role prescribing state-federal regulation of immigrants, the movement of free blacks within the United States and on the origins, state court decisions, federal precedents, appellate arguments, and opinion-making that culminated in the Court's decision of the Passenger Cases.

Anita Whitney was a child of wealth and privilege who became a vocal leftist early in the twentieth century, supporting radical labor groups such as the Wobblies and helping to organize the Communist Labor Party. In 1919 she was arrested and charged with violating California's recently passed laws banning any speech or activity intended to change the American political and economic systems. The story of the Supreme Court case that grew out of Whitney's conviction, told in full in this book, is also the story of how Americans came to enjoy the most liberal speech laws in the world.In clear and engaging language, noted legal scholar Philippa Strum traces the fateful interactions of Whitney, a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims; Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a brilliant son of immigrants; the teeming immigrant neighborhoods and left wing labor politics of the early twentieth century; and the lessons some Harvard Law School professors took from World War I-era restrictions on speech. Though the Supreme Court upheld Whitney's conviction, it included an opinion by Justice Brandeis--joined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.--that led to a decisive change in the way the Court understood First Amendment free speech protections. Speaking Freely takes us into the discussions behind this dramatic change, as Holmes, Brandeis, Judge Learned Hand, and Harvard Law professors Zechariah Chafee and Felix Frankfurter debate the extent of the First Amendment and the important role of free speech in a democratic society. In Brandeis's opinion, we see this debate distilled in a statement of the value of free speech and the harm that its suppression does to a democracy, along with reflections on the importance of freedom from government control for the founders and the drafters of the First Amendment.Through Whitney v. California and its legacy, Speaking Freely shows how the American approach to speech, differing as it does that of every other country, reflects the nation's unique history. Nothing less than a primer in the history of free speech rights in the US, the book offers a sobering and timely lesson as fear once more raises the specter of repression.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are indelibly etched into our cultural memory. This is the story of how the legal ramifications of that day brought two presidents, Congress, and the Supreme Court into repeated confrontation over the incarceration of hundreds of suspected terrorists and "e;enemy combatants"e; at the US naval base in Guantnamo, Cuba. Could these prisoners (including an American citizen) be held indefinitely without due process of law? Did they have the right to seek their release by habeas corpus in US courts? Could they be tried in a makeshift military judicial system? With Guantnamo well into its second decade, these questions have challenged the three branches of government, each contending with the others, and each invoking the Constitution's separation of powers as well as its checks and balances.In The 9/11 Terror Cases, Allan A. Ryan leads students and general readers through the pertinent cases: Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, both decided by the Supreme Court in 2004; Hamdan v. Bush, decided in 2006; and Boumediene v. Bush, in 2008. An eloquent writer and an expert in military law and constitutional litigation, Ryan is an adept guide through the nuanced complexities of these cases, which rejected the sweeping powers asserted by President Bush and Congress, and upheld the rule of law, even for enemy combatants. In doing so, as we see clearly in Ryan's deft account, the Supreme Court's rulings speak directly to the extent and nature of presidential and congressional prerogative, and to the critical separation and balance of powers in the governing of the United States.

In 1957, a violent mob barred black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School and was faced off against paratroopers sent by a reluctant President Eisenhower. This book provides a summary of that historic case and shows that it paved the way for later civil rights victories. It describes the work of the Little Rock NAACP.