Description
Book SynopsisRather than mount a theoretical defense of a forward-thinking jurisprudence, legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer offers an empirical study of how this approach to constitutional interpretation actually leads to better law.
Reading Law Forward looks at seven judges who exemplify this alternative jurisprudence.
Trade Review"Examining the work of seven leading figures in the history of US jurisprudence, Hoffer shows through sketches of their lives and detailed analysis of some of their most important opinions how each was committed to interpreting the law so that it would continue to contribute to the improvement of social and economic life. To do so they drew upon no single interpretive theory but rather a wide range of materials: text, original understandings, precedents, policy considerations. This is a bracing corrective to arguments that assert that our tradition is firmly committed to a single interpretive approach that disdains attention to policy and good outcomes."—Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, emeritus, Harvard Law School, and author of Red, White, and Blue: A Critical Analysis of Constitutional Law
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Reading Law Forward
- 1. John Marshall
2. Joseph Story
- 3. Lemuel Shaw
- 4. Louis D. Brandeis
- 5. Benjamin N. Cardozo
- 6. William O. Douglas
- 7. Stephen G. Breyer
- Conclusion: The Making of a Democratic Jurisprudence
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
