David Hackett Souter: Traditional Republican on the Rehnquist Court

ISBN-13: 9780195159332 / Angielski / Twarda / 2005 / 336 str.

Tinsley E. Yarbrough

Opis

When the first President Bush chose David Hackett Souter for the Supreme Court in 1990, the slender New Englander with the shy demeanor and ambiguous past was quickly dubbed a "stealth candidate." Since his appointment, Souter has embraced a flexible, evolving, and highly pragmatic judicial style that embraces a high regard for precedent--even liberal decisions of the Warren and Burger Courts with which he may have personally disagreed. Ultimately, Yarbrough contends, Souter has become the principal Rehnquist Court opponent of the originalist, text-bound jurisprudence that many of the more conservative Justices profess to champion. Sifting through Souter's opinions, papers of the Justice's contemporaries and other relevant records and interviews, esteemed Supreme Court biographer Tinsley Yarbrough here gives us the real David Souter, crafting a fascinating account of one of the heretofore most elusive Justices in the history of the Court.

Recenzje

"Conservatives view the first President Bush's appointment of David H. Souter as a huge miscalculation, and the results seem to bear them out. Souter has voted with the liberals on abortion, separation of church and state, federal legislative power, and Bush v. Gore. In this penetrating analysis, Tinsley E. Yarbrough attributes Justice Souter's decisions to an unwilligness to uproot precedent and a respect for "our settled law." Yarbrough persuasively depicts Souter as an exemplar of the common-law tradition and places him squarely in the mold of Yarbrough's previous subject, the second Justice Harlan."—John Jeffries, Dean, University of Virginia School of Law

O autorze

Tinsley E. Yarbrough is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of Political Science, East Carolina University. His books include The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution, Judicial Enigma: The First Justice Harlan, John Marshall Harlan: Great Dissenter of the Warren Court, and Judge Frank Johnson and Human Rights in Alabama, for which he won an ABA Silver Gavel Award. He lives in Greenville, North Carolina.