How Public Opinion Has Influenced The Supreme Court And Shaped The Meaning Of The Constitution
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
October 2009
On Sale: September 29, 2009
624 pages ISBN: 0374220344 EAN: 9780374220341 Kindle: B003BGGYE6 Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
In recent years, the justices of the Supreme Court have ruled definitively on such issues as abortion, school prayer, and military tribunals in the war on terror. They decided one of American historyβs most contested presidential elections. Yet for all their power, the justices never face election and hold their offices for life. This combination of influence and apparent unaccountability has led many to complain that there is something illegitimateβeven undemocraticβabout judicial authority.
In The Will of the People, Barry Friedman challenges that claim by showing that the Court has always been subject to a higher power: the American public. Judicial positions have been abolished, the justicesβ jurisdiction has been stripped, the Court has been packed, and unpopular decisions have been defied. For at least the past sixty years, the justices have made sure that their decisions do not stray too far from public opinion.
Friedmanβs pathbreaking account of the relationship between popular opinion and the Supreme Courtβfrom the Declaration of Independence to the end of the Rehnquist court in 2005βdetails how the American people came to accept their most controversial institution and shaped the meaning of the Constitution.
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