The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution.The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution Tinsley E. Yarbrough Oxford University Press 198 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10016-4314 306pp., $35 Reviewed by Erwin Chemerinsky Erwin Chemerinsky (born 1953) is a well-known professor of Constitutional law and federal civil procedure, has recently accepted a position at the University of California, Irvine, in the new Donald Bren School of Law, beginning in 2009. The Rehnquist Court just completed its 15th term, and it has made major changes in constitutional doctrines in virtually every area of the law. Tinsley Yarbrough's new book provides a thorough summary of the Court's rulings on each major topic of constitutional law. The book offers a detailed, yet readable read·a·ble adj. 1. Easily read; legible: a readable typeface. 2. Pleasurable or interesting to read: a readable story. , account of the Supreme Court's decisions in the last decade and a half. Yarbrough's book is not the first to assess the Rehnquist Court's constitutional decision making. David Savage's book Turning Right: The Making of the Rehnquist Supreme Court offers an account of the first few terms of this Court and its conservative approach to many constitutional issues. And Edward Lazarus's book Closed Chambers provides a former law clerk's account of the internal workings and dynamics of the Court. Savage wrote from the perspective of a journalist who covers the Supreme Court on a daily basis for a major newspaper. Lazarus wrote as a former law clerk law clerk n. A person, typically an attorney, employed as an assistant to a judge or another attorney, especially in order to gain legal experience. who is critical of what he sees as a deeply divided Court. Both Savage and Lazarus sought to provide readers with new information about how the Supreme Court decided particular cases. In contrast, Yarbrough, who teaches political science at East Carolina University East Carolina University is a public, coeducational, intensive research university located in Greenville, North Carolina, United States. Named East Carolina University by statue and commonly known as ECU or East Carolina in Greenville, North Carolina
Greenville, one of the fastest growing cities in North Carolina, is the county seat of Pitt County, and is the principal city of the Greenville, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. , offers a political scientist's account of the Rehnquist Court. The book is more thorough in covering more areas of constitutional law over a longer period of time than either of the earlier books. And it is more a description of what the Rehnquist Court has done than it is a critique or analysis of the decisions of the past 15 years. The book begins with a chapter that describes the selection and confirmation of the justices who comprise the Rehnquist Court. The second chapter provides a short overview of the Supreme Court's internal workings, focusing especially on the role of law clerks and the Court's emphasis on maintaining secrecy. The remaining seven chapters of the book look at particular areas of constitutional law: government power, economic rights, unenumerated rights Rights that are not expressly mentioned in the written text of a constitution but instead are inferred from the language, history, and structure of the constitution, or cases interpreting it. , the religion clauses, freedom of expression and association, criminal justice, and equal protection. Each chapter considers a number of specific issues and many cases concerning the topic. The strength of the book is this comprehensiveness, but this also is its weakness. The effort to cover so many topics in a 306-page book limits the depth of the discussion. Also, every issue seems to get about the same amount of space, and the result is that overall trends do not get the attention they deserve. For example, the Rehnquist Court's most significant changes in constitutional law have been in the area of federalism--limiting the scope of Congress's powers, reviving the Tenth Amendment The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: , and greatly expanding the sovereign immunity The legal protection that prevents a sovereign state or person from being sued without consent. Sovereign immunity is a judicial doctrine that prevents the government or its political subdivisions, departments, and agencies from being sued without its consent. of state governments. Although many of the cases are discussed, at least briefly, the overall change in constitutional law is not explained or analyzed. Nonetheless, the book provides a clear and enjoyable account of the Supreme Court's decisions over the last 15 years. Yarbrough is careful to assume little background knowledge on the part of his readers, so the book should be readily accessible to nonlawyers. The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution succeeds at the task Yarbrough identifies as his goal in the preface: providing a careful review of the doctrines of constitutional law and how they have changed since William Rehnquist Noun 1. William Rehnquist - United States jurist who served as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court from 1972 until 1986, when he was appointed chief justice (born in 1924) Rehnquist, William Hubbs Rehnquist became chief justice. Erwin Chemerinsky is the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. , and Political Science at the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission . |
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