基本説明
New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2007.
Full Description
The Supreme Court appointments process is broken, and the timing couldn't be worse--for liberals or conservatives. The Court is just one more solid conservative justice away from an ideological sea change--a hard-right turn on an array of issues that affect every American, from abortion to environmental protection. But neither those who look at this prospect with pleasure nor those who view it with horror will be able to make informed judgments about the next nominee to the Court--unless the appointments process is fixed now. In The Next Justice, Christopher Eisgruber boldly proposes a way to do just that. He describes a new and better manner of deliberating about who should serve on the Court--an approach that puts the burden on nominees to show that their judicial philosophies and politics are acceptable to senators and citizens alike. And he makes a new case for the virtue of judicial moderates. Long on partisan rancor and short on serious discussion, today's appointments process reveals little about what kind of judge a nominee might make.
Eisgruber argues that the solution is to investigate how nominees would answer a basic question about the Court's role: When and why is it beneficial for judges to trump the decisions of elected officials? Through an examination of the politics and history of the Court, Eisgruber demonstrates that pursuing this question would reveal far more about nominees than do other tactics, such as investigating their views of specific precedents or the framers' intentions. Written with great clarity and energy, The Next Justice provides a welcome exit from the uninformative political theater of the current appointments process.
Contents
Preface ix Chapter 1. A Broken Process in Partisan Times 1 Chapter 2: Why Judges Cannot Avoid Political Controversy 17 Chapter 3: The Incoherence of Judicial Restraint 31 Chapter 4: Politics at the Court 51 Chapter 5: Why Judges Sometimes Agree When Politicians Cannot 73 Chapter 6: Judicial Philosophies and Why They Matter 98 Chapter 7: How Presidents Have Raised the Stakes 124 Chapter 8: Should the Senate Defer to the President? 144 Chapter 9: How to Change the Hearings 164 Chapter 10: What Kinds of Justices Should We Want? 178 Chapter 11: The Path Forward 186 Notes 193 Index 225
