For most Americans, habeas corpus is the cornerstone of our legal system: the principal constitutional check on arbitrary government power, allowing an arrested person to challenge the legality of his detention. In a study that could not be more timely, Justin Wert reexamines this essential individual right and shows that habeas corpus is not necessarily the check that we've assumed. Habeas corpus, it emerges, is as much a tool of politics as it is of law.

In this first study of habeas corpus in an American political context, Wert shifts our collective emphasis from the judicial to the...

The U. S. Constitution begins with the soaring words "We the People," but we, the people, have little to do with the document as most of us have come to know it. When most people think of the constitution they think of it as a legal instrument, the province of judges and lawyers, who alone possess the expertise and knowledge necessary to discern its elusive and complex meaning.

This book outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This "Civic Constitution" constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming "the...

Americans err in thinking that while their politics may be ailing, their Constitution is fine. Sick politics is a sure sign of constitutional failure. This is Sotirios Barber's message in Constitutional Failure. Public attitudes fostered by a consumer culture, constitution worship, the lack of a trusted leadership community, and academic historicism and value skepticism--these, this book tells us in clear and bracing terms, are at the root of our political dysfunction.

Barber characterizes the Constitution as a plan of government--a set of means to public purposes like national...

The first paperback edition of a classic of American constitutional theory. The book is divided into two parts. In Part I Professor Tushnet appraises the five major competing "grand theories" of constitutional law and interpretation, and, argues that none of them satisfy their own requirements for coherence and judicial constraint. In Part II the author offers a descriptive sociology of constitutional doctrine and raises critical questions as to whether a grand theory is necessary, is it possible to construct a coherent, useful grand theory, and is construction of an uncontroversial grand...

The Missouri legislature passes a bill to flout federal gun-control laws it deems unconstitutional. Texas refuses to recognize same-sex marriages, citing the state's sovereignty. The Tenth Amendment Center promotes the "Federal Health Care Nullification Act." In these and many other similar instances, the spirit of nullification is seeing a resurgence in an ever-more politically fragmented and decentralized America. What this means--in legal, cultural, and historical terms--is the question explored in Nullification and Secession in Modern Constitutional Thought. Bringing together a...