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Playing It Safe: How the Supreme Court Sidesteps Hard Cases and Stunts the Development of Law
Hardcover
Series: Critical America, Book 49
ISBN13: 9780814747407
Publisher: New York Univ Pr
Published: Aug 1 2001
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.24
Height: 0.98 Width: 6.38 Depth: 9.28
Language: English
It is one of the unspoken truths of the American judicial system that courts go out of their way to avoid having to decide important and controversial issues. Even the Supreme Court from which the entire nation seeks guidance frequently engages in transparent tactics to avoid difficult, politically sensitive cases.
By sharing the stories of litigants who struggled unsuccessfully to raise before the Supreme Court constitutional matters of the utmost importance from the 1970s-1990s, Playing it Safe argues that judges who fail to exercise their power in hard cases in effect abdicate their constitutional responsibility when it is needed most, and in so doing betray their commitment to neutrality. Lisa Kloppenberg demonstrates how the Court often avoids socially sensitive cases, such as those involving racial and ethnic discrimination, gender inequalities, abortion restrictions, sexual orientation discrimination, and environmental abuses. In the process, the Court ducks its responsibility to check the more politically responsive branches of government when majority rule pushes the boundaries of constitutional law. The Court has not used these malleable doctrines evenhandedly: it has actively shielded states from liability and national oversight, and aggressively expanded standing requirements to limit the role of federal courts.
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