Shaping Constitutional Values: Elected Government, the Supreme Court, and the Abortion Debate

by Neal Devins and Professor Neal Devins

Book Overview

In several provocative case studies, Neal Devins explores the role that judicial and elected officials play in forging constitutional meaning. To illustrate his thesis that constitutional interpretation is 'a dialectic involving all of government,' he examines the evolution of abortion politics in the years since Roe. Here and throughout, Devins demonstrates the interdependence of governmental branches so often obscured in conventional accounts of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801852854
• ISBN13: 9780801852855
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Important Book For Understanding the Modern Court

Neal Devins takes an important look at the role of the Court and elected government through the filter of the abortion debate. For many years, legal academics have virtually ignored the very real impact that elected government has on the Court and vice versa. Devins follows a different path by looking at the progression of judicial review and the different eras of the Court, including FDR's court packing plan and the Court's tendency to be quite political when necessary. Devins is a Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary, where he has done important research on the issues associated with the interaction of the branches. Buy the book; the results might be very suprising to those that think the Supreme Court is totally independent from the other branches. Oh yeah...and buy the paperback version; it is a lot cheaper.