When the deplorable conditions in Alabama's prisons were revealed at trial in 1975, Judge Frank Johnson declared the prison system as a whole to constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth amendment. He then issued an elaborate decree specifying improvements that must be made to satisfy constitutional standards. In this study, Larry W. Yackle describes the campaign to achieve prison reform in Alabama through constitutional litigation in the federal courts and surveys the process that produced Johnson's decree, and subsequent efforts to enforce his order in the face of...
When the deplorable conditions in Alabama's prisons were revealed at trial in 1975, Judge Frank Johnson declared the prison system as a whole to const...
Go ahead and try to make a federal case of it. That may seem to be your right, but as Larry Yackle reveals in Reclaiming the Federal Courts, the guardians of that right don't see it that way. A systematic study of the role the federal courts play in enforcing the Constitution, this powerful book shows how the current conservative Supreme Court has undermined that role by restricting citizens' access to these courts.
Yackle focuses on judicially created doctrines that channel certain cases away from the federal courts (which tend to hold government power in check) and into...
Go ahead and try to make a federal case of it. That may seem to be your right, but as Larry Yackle reveals in Reclaiming the Federal Courts,...
