A Masterpiece on Judicial Review
Bunn, Charles
contemporary librarian who must live with community pressures, and who generally, though not always, yields consciously or unconsciously to such pressures when buying controversial books. Lewis...
...It examines the institution of judicial review from the vantage point of today, looking not only at what the founders said about it but at what the country has done about it, and at what it has done and not done for the country ever since, and is capable of doing now...
...But he would deny it to people occupying public offices or other positions of public or private trust when questioned regarding their trust...
...The American people have found it in their courts...
...For this one is a masterpiece...
...That does not mean that it is all brand new...
...A Masterpiece on Judicial Review The People and the Court: Judicial Review in a Democracy, by Charles L. Black, Jr...
...That someone, if its answers are to be accepted, must be separated far enough from the organ exercising the disputed power so that its consideration is accepted as impartial, and must have power also to say "No," as well as "Yes...
...In a government whose powers are limited that means that someone must have power and duty to decide in doubtful cases whether disputed action is legitimate...
...The success of any government, he shows, depends on the general acceptance of its legitimate actions as legitimate...
...Professor Caughey's book, Their Majesties the Mob, is a fascinating collection of documents dealing with the vigilante impulse in America from early frontier days to the time of McCarthy...
...Macmillan...
...is "yes" and "no...
...Black is not doubtful what that is, nor that it is important...
...By another law professorl How many can one take...
...We have learned," Black notes, "that law is not precise and automatic in its expounding and application...
...The advantage which we have over Hamilton and Marshall and all the other founders is that we know more than they did of the institutions they created, for we can see now how they have worked for 170 years...
...until something surely better is invented they had better continue the arrangement...
...He emphasizes the wide variety of situations in which the privilege is claimed...
...If we believe this has rendered untenable the very concept of law as opposed to mere administration, let us frankly say so, and cease to talk about 'law' in cases of every description, for the insight applies just as well to other cases as to constitutional cases...
...Reviewed by Charles Bunn When the Editor of The Progressive asked me to review this book I almost turned him down...
...He would be scrupulously careful to safeguard the right for run-of-the-mill defendants accused of crime...
...The main thesis that it argues was urged by Alexander Hamilton, enacted by the first Congress, decided by John Marshall, and has been part of our constitutional system ever since...
...The answer to the question, "Shall we amend the Fifth Amendment...
...As for God and Man in Washington, Paul Blanshard is playing his same old record...
...Lewis Mayers, a professor of law at the City College of New York, has written a competent, objective, non-sentimental survey of the Fifth Amendment guaranty against compulsory self-incrimination...
...It is a sort of miracle to find, within a government, an organ that can exercise that function...
...Having now read it with some care, I can report the answer: However many you have read, and however bored you think you are with the whole subject, this one is a must...
...This one is for the election trade...
...His introductory essay on the significance of vigilantism in American history is extremely well done...
...I think this is an absolutely first rate book...
...This book fully develops that advantage...
...If we believe, on the other hand, that the concept of law is a good star to guide on, even though it is not tacked to the glassy celestial sphere of certainty, we can continue the assent which our ancestors gave to the work of the institution which they devised for subjecting the government to its own law...
...231 pp...
...Another book about the Supreme Court...
Vol. 24 • May 1960 • No. 5
