The Constitution and the Court

...It is a good try, however, and I am sure he will persevere as he acquires access to more documents...

...Holt, Rinehart, Winston...

...The result is an eminently readable and informative little book...

...This book, like all of Konefsky's books, is clearly written and well documented, but for the most part the author tells a familiar story...

...While these two great Founding Fathers are given equal billing in the title of the book, the author gives much more attention to Marshall than to Hamilton...

...191 pp...

...249 pp...

...7.50...

...Since the Justices confer behind closed doors, and do not keep or publish minutes of their proceedings, it has always been difficult to find out just what goes into the decision of cases...

...The first lecture is concerned with the right to vote, and the second with, the administration of justice...

...Macmillan...

...Danelski has dug deeply, has seen a great many different kinds of source materials, and has written an absorbing story...

...He has hit upon many nuggets of information which help to illuminate the decision-making process of the Supreme Court in various cases...

...But we always knew that the Court was a small group, that the Justices talk to each other and seek to influence each other, that some are smarter than others, and that some acquire more influence than others...

...A Supreme Court Justice is Appointed, by David J. Danelski...

...Delmar Karlen, who is director of the Institute of Judicial Administration at New York University, and who once taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School, set out to do something quite different and much more modest intellectually in his little book, The Citizen in Court...

...Columbia University Press...

...One of the central problems of that branch of American public law which is concerned with human rights is the adjustment of national and state interests within the structure of the Federal system...

...Our nation has been perennially interested in the history of the Constitution, and in the Supreme Court, which is its ultimate interpreter...

...Random House...

...Nevertheless, the Federal government is involved in the struggle against racial discrimination, and in these lectures Marshall describes its slow and difficult progress, and the tremendous obstacles it has to combat...

...While this is a foreshortened and simplified review of the great events surrounding the writing and ratification of the Constitution, and does not bring out new facts based on fresh research, it does summarize succinctly a vast amount of research by various historical scholars...

...But Murphy's objective is to go beyond mere anecdote to the construction of general theories about the strategy of judicial decision-making, and I am afraid that his data are not sufficiently substantial to support the theories...

...University of Chicago Press...

...The author would have been well advised to be content with that...

...Elements of Judicial Strategy, by Walter F. Murphy...

...But Justices do write letters to each other, and to other people, and they often keep notes or diaries, and in one way or another they manage to leave records of some sort that scholars can piece together, if they can get their hands on them...

...Merrill Jensen, who is Vilas professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, has written a useful account of The Making of the American Constitution...

...His purpose is to describe to lay readers, in simple,, non-technical terms, how our courts operate...

...The book is well-conceived and well written in clear English, and apt illustrations illuminate the ideas the author seeks to get across...

...He begins with the basic fact that the Court is a small group, and having read the burgeoning modern literature on the sociology of small groups, proceeds to apply this sociology to the Court, using his Justices' papers for illustrations...

...It is necessary," he writes, "to be realistic about the limitations on the power of the Federal government to eliminate racial discrimination by simple law enforcement...

...Civil Liberties and the Arts, edited by William Wasserstrom...

...3.25 (paperback...

...This book, like each issue of Twice A Year, is a potpourri of diverse materials, including critical essays, letters, poems, short stories, and brief sketches...

...Unfortunately, after telling the story, he devotes four additional chapters to proving how scientific he is by trying his hand at sociological generalization, and I found this effort both inconclusive and a bit irritating...

...While this is an interesting collection of writings, many of them are unrelated to the title, which suggests that the book is concerned with civil liberties...

...In both lectures, Marshall is concerned with the efforts of the national government to maintain decent minimum standards in the face of local intransigency deeply rooted in ancient notions about states' rights...

...It is altogether lawful and quite proper for political scientists to utilize the historical method, and in this instance the method yielded rich returns...

...The Citizen in Court, by Delmar Karlen...

...In John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton he describes them as "co-architects of a distinctive vision of America's national destiny...

...In our day, we have been especially concerned with civil liberties questions...

...It is they who control the institutions which grant or deny Federally Federalism and Civil Rights, by Burke Marshall...

...274 pp...

...4.95...

...John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton, by Samuel J. Konefsky...

...He is concerned with how the Supreme Court Justices arrive at their decisions...

...Marshall recognizes frankly that President Kennedy's basic commitment to eliminate the racial caste system cannot be accomplished by the national government alone...

...8.50...

...Finally, Samuel J. Konefsky, who teaches political science at Brooklyn College, and who has written extensively on the Supreme Court, had the happy thought of bracketing John Marshall and Alexander Hamilon as architects of the American Constitution...

...211 pp...

...The emphasis is upon the analysis of Marshall's most important opinions in the great early cases...

...5.95...

...There have, of course, been many attempts to explain legal processes to laymen, but this, I believe, is one of the best...

...Professor Murphy's specialty for some time has been the investigation of the papers of deceased Justices, and he has managed to secure access to quite a few of them...

...1.45 (paperback...

...His book, Civil Liberties and the Arts, is a group of selections taken from Twice A Year, a semi-annual journal published in book form by Dorothy Norman from 1938 to 1948, and drawing heavily upon the work of refugees from European tyranny...

...This has been done often, and no new and important facts or insights are developed...

...Since we have little systematic knowledge about the politics of Supreme Court appointments, this book makes a serious contribution to our understanding of the process...

...For, he adds, "only political power—not court orders or other Federal law—will insure the election of fair men as sheriffs, school board members, police chiefs, mayors, county commissioners, and state officials...

...Another recent book which purports to deal with civil liberties is the miscellany put together by William Wasserstrom who teaches English at Syracuse University...

...In his new book, Elements of Judicial Strategy, Walter F. Murphy, who teaches political science with great distinction at Princeton University, approaches American constitutional law from quite a different point of view...

...Syracuse University Press...

...Since most people will at some time or other be a litigant, or witness, or juror, or be related to litigation in some fashion, this book deserves wide attention...

...He denies that Marshall took his cue from Hamilton, but he does make it clear that they both had the same point of view about how the Constitution should be construed, and that they held to about the same ideology...

...Jensen is pre-eminent among them today, and in addition, writes in the best literary tradition of American historical scholarship...

...As he points out, the idea of the book is "that law deserves a place in a liberal education...

...The Making of the American Constitution, by Merrill Jensen...

...331 pp...

...Van Nostrand...

...The remaining three books are concerned with historical aspects of the Supreme Court...

...guaranteed rights...

...In the 1964 Speranza Lectures, Burke Marshall, who served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice during the Kennedy Administration, made a weighty contribution to the examination of this problem...

...In A Supreme Court Justice is Appointed, David Danelski, who teaches political science at Yale, has produced a lively and informative account of how President Harding came to appoint Pierce Butler to the Court in 1922...

...Much of this little book, Federalism and Civil Rights, spells out the difficulties and limitations which circumscribe the effectiveness of national power in the South...

...3.50...

...Beyond adding some illustrations of discrete events, I doubt whether Murphy's attempt to create a general theory about the Court as a small group takes us very far...

...242 pp...

...85 pp...

...Problems in constitutional law have always found a large audience outside the small circle of the legal profession...

...For example, Oskar Maria Graf's two stories about Ivan the Terrible are good reading, but they have no possible relationship to civil liberties, unless that term is used so broadly as to make it coextensive with the whole range of human experience...

...There are, however, some good pieces on civil liberties, notably T. V. Smith's speech to the Illinois Senate in 1937 on freedom of speech, David Ries-man's essay on democracy and defamation, and a great lecture given by Gun-nar Myrdal in 1948 on the American Negro problem...