Second edition, edited by Kermit Hall and James W. Ely
Over 450 entries
The Supreme Court has been the site of some of the great debates of American history, from child labor and prayer in the schools, to busing and abortion. The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions offers lively and insightful accounts of the most important cases ever argued before the Court, from Marbury v. Madison and Scott v. Sandford (the Dred Scott decision) to Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.
This new edition of the Guide contains more than 450 entries on major Supreme Court cases, including 53 new entries on the latest landmark rulings. Among the new entries are Bush v. Gore, Nixon v. United States, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. Four decisions – Hamdi v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Rasu v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padilla – are considered in a single essay entitled Enemy Combatant Cases.
Written by eminent legal scholars, each entry provides the United States Reports citation, the date the case was argued and decided, the vote of the Justices, who wrote the opinion for the Court, who concurred, and who dissented. More important, the entries feature an informative account of the particulars of the case, the legal and social background, the reasoning behind the Court’s decision, and the cases impact on American society.
For anyone interested in the great controversies of our time, this invaluable book is a must read on the epic constitutional battles that have informed American life.
The late Kermit Hall was President of the State University of New York at Albany.
James W. Ely Jr. is Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Professor of Law, and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University.
Print edition ISBN: 9780195379396
Publishing history: First published 1999 by Oxford University Press, Inc.; first published as an Oxford University Press paperback 2000; second edition 2009
Copyright: © Oxford University Press, Inc.1999, 2002, 2009
