The Constitution in the Supreme Court : The First Hundred Years, 1789-1888

Currie's masterful synthesis of legal analysis and narrative history, gives us a sophisticated and much-needed evaluation of the Supreme Court's first hundred years. "A thorough, systematic, and careful assessment. . . . As a reference work for constitutional teachers, it is a gold mine."—Charles A. Lofgren, __Constitutional Commentary__ This comprehensive critical history of the U.S. Supreme Court's constitutional opinions during its first 100 years (1789-1888) is a masterly synthesis of legal analysis and narrative history. It was during this period that the Court created a vigorous tradition of constitutional interpretation, its decisions shaping the nature of government and the lives of citizens. The author maintains that justices are, and ought to be, subservient to the text of the Constitution and therefore are not charged with the invention of legal doctrines that are in consonance with their individual or collective notions of what the Constitution ought to say. Their role, he believes, is to guide litigants according to the principles explicitly stated in the Constitution. They also have an obligation to explain the reasons for their decisions as concisely and persuasively as possible. ISBN 0-226-13108-4 : $55.00 (For use only in the library)

Currie's masterful synthesis of legal analysis and narrative history, gives us a sophisticated and much-needed evaluation of the Supreme Court's first hundred years.

"A thorough, systematic, and careful assessment. . . . As a reference work for constitutional teachers, it is a gold mine."—Charles A. Lofgren, Constitutional Commentary

The First Hundred Years 1789-1888.Histories of the Supreme Court and of Constitution abound, as do legal analyses of constitutional decisions. The aim is to provide a critical history, analyzing from a lawyer's standpoint the entire constitutional work of the Court's first one hundred years. Because jurisdiction is a threshold issue in every federal case, the Court would settle in its first forty years many of the fundamental issues surrounding the federal judicial power. David P. Currie. Tables Of Cases: P. 477-486. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes.