Integrating legal and historical materials and insights, Professor Pomerance examines in this volume the troubled saga of the U.S. pursuit of the `Supreme Court of the Nations' idea, from its early pre-World War I origins through the present post-Nicaragua period of U.S. reserve, disillusionment and reassessment.

The hope that international adjudication will some day come to replace international aggression has long been a fond aspiration of mankind, and nowhere, perhaps, has it taken firmer root than in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court has been held up as a model for the successful adjudication of interstate disputes and for the evolution of a body of revered legal norms. Yet America's own record "vis-a-vis" international adjudication and the International Court has been marked by ambivalence and a sharp dichotomy between rhetoric and deeds. Integrating legal and historical materials and insights, Professor Pomerance examines in this volume the troubled saga of the U.S. pursuit of the Supreme Court of the Nations' idea, from its early pre-World War I origins through the present post-"Nicaragua" period of U.S. reserve, disillusionment and reassessment. Spurning a morality-play' interpretive mold, the author pays particular attention to recurrent themes and the roots of their recurrence; the specific cadences and nuances in the grand' and lesser U.S. debates on the Court; the continuities and changes in "both" partners of the U.S.-Court relationship; and the various prisms through which that relationship might be viewed. In this manner, the important contemporary debate on the future contours of the U.S.-Court nexus is sharply illuminated.

In the first comprehensive accounting of the U.S. Supreme CourtÕs race-related jurisprudence, a distinguished historian and renowned civil rights lawyer scrutinize a legacy too often blighted by racial injustice. The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice. From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the CourtÕs race recordÑa legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. For nearly a century, the Court ensured that the nineteenth-century Reconstruction amendments would not truly free and enfranchise African Americans. And the twenty-first century has seen a steady erosion of commitments to enforcing hard-won rights. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the CourtÕs race jurisprudence. Addressing nearly two hundred cases involving AmericaÕs racial minorities, the authors probe the parties involved, the justicesÕ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings. We learn of heroes such as Thurgood Marshall; villains, including Roger Taney; and enigmas like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history also reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the countryÕs promise of equal rights for all.

In this original, far-reaching, and timely book, Justice Stephen Breyer examines the work of the Supreme Court of the United States in an increasingly interconnected world, a world in which all sorts of activity, both public and private—from the conduct of national security policy to the conduct of international trade—obliges the Court to understand and consider circumstances beyond America’s borders. It is a world of instant communications, lightning-fast commerce, and shared problems (like public health threats and environmental degradation), and it is one in which the lives of Americans are routinely linked ever more pervasively to those of people in foreign lands. Indeed, at a moment when anyone may engage in direct transactions internationally for services previously bought and sold only locally (lodging, for instance, through online sites), it has become clear that, even in ordinary matters, judicial awareness can no longer stop at the water’s edge. To trace how foreign considerations have come to inform the thinking of the Court, Justice Breyer begins with that area of the law in which they have always figured prominently: national security in its constitutional dimension—how should the Court balance this imperative with others, chiefly the protection of basic liberties, in its review of presidential and congressional actions? He goes on to show that as the world has grown steadily “smaller,” the Court’s horizons have inevitably expanded: it has been obliged to consider a great many more matters that now cross borders. What is the geographical reach of an American statute concerning, say, securities fraud, antitrust violations, or copyright protections? And in deciding such matters, can the Court interpret American laws so that they might work more efficiently with similar laws in other nations? While Americans must necessarily determine their own laws through democratic process, increasingly, the smooth operation of American law—and, by extension, the advancement of American interests and values—depends on its working in harmony with that of other jurisdictions. Justice Breyer describes how the aim of cultivating such harmony, as well as the expansion of the rule of law overall, with its attendant benefits, has drawn American jurists into the relatively new role of “constitutional diplomats,” a little remarked but increasingly important job for them in this fast-changing world. Written with unique authority and perspective, The Court and the World reveals an emergent reality few Americans observe directly but one that affects the life of every one of us. Here is an invaluable understanding for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

Excerpt from A World Court in the Light of the United States Supreme Court Humanity has long sought to ward off the ravages and burdens that result from war. The lake dwellers of Switzerland tried to protect themselves against the attack of strangers by building their dwellings above the water on piles far from the shore. The Romans, at the height of their prosperity, built a line of fortifications, Limes Imperii Romani, from the Rhine to the Danube. Those fortifications, inside of which were the medicinal springs of the Taunus region, served against the barbarians of the north as the connecting link between those two rivers that were the northern boulevards on the continent of Europe of the Roman Empire. The Chinese Empire built a long wall extending from the sea inland, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, to keep out the barbarians of the north of Asia. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.