Overview

A revelatory look at the Warren Burger Supreme Court finds that it was not moderate or transitional, but conservative--and it shaped today's constitutional landscape. It is an ""important book...a powerful corrective to the standard narrative of the Burger Court"" (The New York Times Book Review). When Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968 he promised to change the Supreme Court. With four appointments to the court, including Warren E. Burger as the chief justice, he did just that. In 1969, the Burger Court succeeded the famously liberal Warren Court, which had significantly expanded civil liberties and was despised by conservatives across the country. The Burger Court is often described as a ""transitional"" court between the Warren Court and the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, a court where little of importance happened. But as this ""landmark new book"" (The Christian Science Monitor) shows, the Burger Court veered well to the right in such areas as criminal law, race, and corporate power. Authors Graetz and Greenhouse excavate the roots of the most significant Burger Court decisions and in ""elegant, illuminating arguments"" (The Washington Post) show how their legacy affects us today. ""Timely and engaging"" (Richmond Times-Dispatch), The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right draws on the personal papers of the justices as well as other archives to provide ""the best kind of legal history: cogent, relevant, and timely"" (Publishers Weekly).

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9781476732510

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Reviews

This revelatory book resets how we think about the Constitution and the Supreme Court that interprets it. The Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger is often seen as an afterthought, wedged between the Warren Court and the hard right Justices today. In fact the 1970s and 1980s set the pattern for decades of American life, on topics from campaign finance to presidential power to criminal law. With clarity and insight, Michael Graetz and Linda Greenhouse show how the often jumbled doctrines of that time helped produce the America of today. --Michael Waldman, President, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and author of The Fight to Vote

Ambitious and engaging. . . .Graetz and Greenhouse's work serves as an important corrective, demonstrating that the Burger court demands far more sustained scrutiny and analysis than legal scholarship has generally afforded it. Readers interested in the Supreme Court s role in American society during the second half of the 20th century will gather significant insight from this book s elegant, illuminating arguments. --Justin Driver The Washington Post

Author Information

Michael J. Graetz is a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law Emeritus at Yale University. He has previously published seven books and many articles on a wide range of public policy issues. He also served in important policy positions at the Treasury Department and was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Linda Greenhouse, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and other major journalism awards, covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times for nearly thirty years. Since 2009, she has taught at Yale Law School and written a biweekly op-ed column on the Court as a contributing writer for the Times. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College, Harvard, and earned a master of studies in law degree from Yale Law School. This is her fourth book about the Supreme Court.

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