Melvin I. Urofsky

State Courts and Protective Legislation during the Progressive Era: A Reevaluation

For a number of years, courts during the Progressive Era have been characterized as enemies of reform. Judges, according to that view, read their own conservative biases into law in order to nullify child labor legislation, efforts to establish maximum hours, minimum wages, and workmens compensation, and revisions of traditional rules governing employer liability in job-related accidents. Theodore Roosevelt, Gilbert Roe, Roscoe Pound, and others were only a few voices in the chorus that condemned courts for their allegedly reactionary attitudes toward social legislation. Louis D. Brandeis, for example, on the eve of his nomination to the United States Supreme Court, charged judges with being blind to the great social and economic changes of the past halfcentury and with erecting their own prejudices into legal barriers to reform. Recent studies of the United States Supreme Court have led to a revision of that institutions image as a thoroughgoing enemy of reform. Despite its decisions in such cases as Lochner v. New York, Adair v. United States, and Coppage v. Kansas, which have often been portrayed as epitomizing its opposition to protective legislation, the Court in fact upheld the vast majority of protective statutes it reviewed.2 A similar analysis needs to be done for state courts,

Lethal judgments : assisted suicide and American law

In two 1997 decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. Yet for many people this concept strikes to the heart of our sense of liberty even as it tugs at our hearts in the face of human suffering. Lethal Judgments examines those cases, the law surrounding the plaintiffs claims, and the moral debate over physician-assisted suicide. A concise and gracefully written overview of one of the most complex and contentious areas of American law, it lays out the conflict between individuals supporting privacy rights, due process, and equal protection, and those for whom moral and ethical considerations trump such concepts. Noted constitutional scholar Melvin Urofsky discusses the tangled legal, historical, ethical, and medical issues related to right-to-die arguments, then examines the Supreme Courts position in Washington v. Glucksberg and Quill v. Vacco. He shows how these 1997 cases relate to two other famous cases Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Beth Cruzan and carries the controversy up to the recent trials of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Urofsky considers the many facets of this knotty argument. He differentiates between discontinuation of medical treatment, assisted suicide, and active euthanasia, and he sensitively examines the issues social and religious contexts to enable readers to see both sides of the dispute. He also shows that in its ruling the Supreme Court did not slam the door on the subject but left it ajar by allowing states to legislate on the matter as Oregon has already done. By treating assisted suicide simply as a legal question, observes Urofsky, we miss the real importance of the issue. For patients with AIDS, cancer, and other debilitating illnesses or even for those feeble from age physician-assisted suicide is an expression of personal autonomy, and as modern medicine learns new ways to prolong life, more and more people will seek to exercise this option. Because right-to-die cases are likely to come before the high court again, this book provides students and general readers with a timely appreciation of their importance for legal theory and a useful way to reflect upon the choice between life and death.

Wilson, Brandeis, and the Supreme Court Nomination

In late January 1916, many readers of the New York World chuckled as they looked at Rollin Kirbys editorial cartoon entitled, “The Blow that Almost Killed Father.” In the drawing, Kirby showed a Wall Street big-shot—one who looked a little like J. P. Morgan—prostrate in his desk chair, the ticker-tape machine broken and leaning against the desk, a picture of the New York Stock Exchange askew on the wall, and a newspaper dropped to the ground, its headline blaring “Brandeis for the Supreme Court.”

Review of Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Brandeis and the Progressive Constitution: Erie , the Judicial Power, and the Politics of Federal Courts in Twentieth‐Century America

One of my strongest memories of law school remains the first class in “Federal Courts.” The teacher began by asking if anyone could explain the holding in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938).2 Several students raised their hands, and the answer was soon forthcoming. Federal courts were bound by the decisional rules of the state courts in the states in which theywere located; there is no federal common law. “Very good,” the teacher said. “If you know that, why are you taking this course?”

Affirmative action on trial : sex discrimination in Johnson v. Santa Clara

Affirmative action continues to be one of the most hotly contested issues in America. Volatile and divisive, the debates over its legitimacy have inspired a number of reverse discrimination suits in the federal courts. Like the landmark 1978 Bakke decision, most of these have focused on preferential treatment given racial minorities. In Johnson v. Santa Clara, however, the central issue was gender, not race discrimination, and the Supreme Courts decision in that case marked a resounding victory for women in the work force. Johnson v. Santa Clara involved two people who in 1980 competed for a dispatcher position with the transportation department of Santa Clara County, California. Paul Johnson had more experience and slightly higher test scores, but Diane Joyce was given the job based on affirmative action. An irate Johnson sued the county and won, only to have the decision reversed in appellate court. That reversal was subsequently upheld in the Supreme Courts 1987 decision, reaffirming that it was legitimate for employers to consider gender in hiring. Preeminent legal historian Melvin Urofsky proves an exemplary guide through the complexities of this case as he takes us from the workplace through the various levels of our federal court system. Balancing the particulars of the case with an overview of constitutional law and judicial process, he creates a model legal history that is both appealing and enlightening for the non-scholar. Urofsky is especially good at highlighting the fundamental human drama of this case and shows how Johnson and Joyce were simply ordinary people, each with valid reasons for their actions, but both ultimately caught up in legal and social issues that reached well beyond their own lives. Affirmative Action on Trial pointedly addresses the issue of sex discrimination and the broader controversy over the place of affirmative action in American society. The latter continues to generate headlines, like those that followed the 1996 Supreme Court decision to let stand a lower-court ruling that race cannot be used as a determination for admission to academic programs. More recently, several states have even taken steps to end affirmative action altogether. While its hard to tell how such actions will ultimately impact affirmative action, theres no question that the rulings in cases like Johnson v. Santa Clara will continue to guide and influence the debates both inside and outside the courtroom.

Bone of bone and flesh of flesh

On June 7, 1892, a group of well-to-do German American Jews founded the American Jewish Historical Society. Its first president, Cyrus Adler, declared that it was the patriotic duty of every ethnic group in America to record its contributions to the country. Another of the yahudim present was blunter: the Jews had to show how American they were in order to stem the growing antiSemitism in the country. This attitude of having to convince the gentiles that American Jews were bone of the nations bone, and flesh of its flesh would color the writing of American Jewish history until well after World War II. Much of the material that appeared in the Societys publications was written by amateurs and was openly filiopietistic, with numerous articles on colonial graveyards and early merchants designed to show that Jews were really American after all. Rabbi Isidore Meyer, the longtime editor of the Societys publications, even while encouraging younger scholars to do research and to publish in the field, openly warned them that such work would not help their careers and in fact

Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution@@@Felix Frankfurter: Judicial Restraint and Individual Liberties@@@John Marshall Harlan: Great Dissenter of the Warren Court

John Marshall Harlan served on the Supreme Court from 1955 until his retirement and death in 1971. An articulate and forceful critic of the expansive civil liberties doctrines and constitutional trends of the period, Harlan is considered one of the most scholarly jurists ever to have served on the Supreme Court. This is the first book-length biography and analysis of his judicial and constitutional philosophy.

An Incomplete Portrait@@@The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years, 1789-1888.@@@The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The Second Century, 1888-1986.

The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The Second Century traces the development of the Supreme Court from Chief Justice Fuller (1888-1910) to the retirement of Chief Justice Burger (1969-1986). Currie argues that the Courts work in its second century revolved around two issues: the constitutionality of the regulatory and spending programs adopted to ameliorate the hardships caused by the Industrial Revolution and the need to protect civil rights and liberties. Organizing the cases around the tenure of specific chief justices, Currie distinguishes among the different methods of constitutional exegesis, analyzes the various techniques of opinion writing, and evaluates the legal performance of different Courts. Elegant and readable. Whether you are in favor of judicial restraint or judicial activism, whatever your feelings about the Warren Court, or the Renquist Court, this is a book that justifies serious study.--Robert Stevens, New York Times Book Review

Dear Teacher: The Correspondence of William O. Douglas and Thomas Reed Powell

Recalling his years as a student at the Columbia Law School, William O. Douglas (1898–1980) wrote that one of his teachers, Thomas Reed Powell (1880–1955), was “then an iconoclast. He was the offbeat intellectual who could cut the Supreme Court into ribbons in any field of constitutional law.” Although the two men later drifted apart, they remained good friends for more than two decades, and their correspondence is a remarkable window not only into their agile and creative minds, but into the constitutional and academic issues of their times as well.