Affirmative action continues to be one of the most hotly contested issues in America. Volatile and divisive, the debates over its legitimacy have inspired a number of "reverse discrimination" suits in the federal courts. Like the landmark 1978 Bakke decision, most of these have focused on preferential treatment given racial minorities. In Johnson v. Santa Clara, however, the central issue was gender, not race discrimination, and the Supreme Court's decision in that case marked a resounding victory for women in the work force.

Johnson v. Santa Clara involved two people who in 1980 competed...

In two 1997 decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. Yet for many people this concept strikes to the heart of our sense of liberty even as it tugs at our hearts in the face of human suffering.

Lethal Judgments examines those cases, the law surrounding the plaintiffs' claims, and the moral debate over physician-assisted suicide. A concise and gracefully written overview of one of the most complex and contentious areas of American law, it lays out the conflict between individuals supporting privacy rights, due process,...

Money greases the wheels of American politics from the local level to the White House. In the 2004 presidential campaign, President George W. Bush alone raised nearly $400 million in private and public funds--nearly twenty times the combined total raised by John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960--to defeat challenger John F. Kerry, further fueling anxiety over the power of money to dictate political results.

Melvin Urofsky, one of our nation's most respected legal historians, takes a fresh look at efforts to rein in campaign spending and counter efforts in the courts to preserve the...

This collection of articles analyze and evaluate the presidential careers of the men who have occupied the office since its inception in 1789. In this volume, the leading presidential historians in the United States offer insights into what makes a president great, mediocre, or in the case of most of them something in between. The book considers the nature of presidential greatness. Great presidents seems to have required extraordinary challenges. George Washington had the challenge of creating the very office itself as well as protecting the fragile independence of the United States. Abraham...

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

100 Americans Making Constitutional History: A Biographical History presents 100 profiles of the key people behind some of the most important US Supreme Court cases. Edited by Melvin I. Urofsky, a respected constitutional historian, each 2,000-word profile delves into the social and political context behind landmark Court decisions. For example, while a case like Brown v. Board of Education is about an important idea - the equal protection of the law - at its heart it is the story of a little girl, Linda Brown, who wanted to go to a decent school near her home. The outcome is accessible and...

Few decisions in constitutional law have had as dramatic an impact on American life as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954). This collection of essays published by the Supreme Court Historical Society and CQ Press to commemorate Brown's 50th anniversary, captures the complex history and legacy of the decision that changed public education and race relations in America. Leading constitutional scholars chronicle the path of the law from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legitimating separate but equal in all realms of public life to Brown holding segregated schools to be inherently...

The book presents information through a unique integration of essays and primary source documents that bring both context and a sense of immediacy to the cases discussed. Each case entry includes:
- An informative introductory essays that explains:
- The facts of the case;
- The Court's ruling and its importance;
- A brief overview of the scope and magnitude of public response, with narrative thread tying together primary sources.
- Primary source selections from a wide range of public responses, including:
- Newspapers and magazines;
- Public opinion polls;
-...

Division and Discord offers a comprehensive appraisal of the Supreme Court during the fractious period that bridged the court-packing fight of the Hughes years and the rights explosion of the Warren era. During the dozen years that Melvin I. Urofsky reviews in this volume, the Court ruled on a range of controversial cases, including the internment of the Japanese, the guilt of the Rosenbergs, and the crimes of Nazi saboteurs. At the same time the judicial body struggled internally to balance the strong wills of some of the most important figures in U.S. judicial history-Hugo Black, Felix...

A survey and analysis of the historical context, key figures, and lasting legacy of the Warren Court.