Dispassionate Justice

📖 The Scoop

"Dispassionate Justice," Glendon Schubert's synthesis of the judicial opinions of Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, is a welcome addition to scholarship, filled with detailed knowledge of Jackson and his fellow justices, and of the historical period from the late 'thirties until the emergence of the Warren Court. This distinguished work of scholarship should become required reading for students of the 1940-1956 period in constitutional jurisprudence. The introductory chapter focuses on Robert Jackson's personality and the impact of his legal and political career on his judicial decisions. It urges strongly that Jackson's background as a small-town, upstate New York lawyer, a lifelong Democrat in a Republican area, as a man who learned law in a law firm rather than going to college and law school, fashioned him into a spokesperson for the virtues of nineteenth-century liberalism and individualism. Subsequent chapters illustrate clearly how Jackson was torn during his tenure on the bench between the perspective of small-town individualism and the view that federal regulation was both necessary and appropriate. Decisions examined include issues of freedom of speech, establishment of religion, procedural rights, the establishment clause, property rights, bureaucracy, the role of stare decisis in judicial decision making, the relationship between the federal and state judiciaries, and the nature of advocacy.

Genre: Law / Judicial Power (fancy, right?)