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• Foreword to the third edition
• Foreword to the second edition
• American constitutionalism
• Judicial review
• Constitutional analysis
• Constitutional liberty
• Government powers
• Structure of the Constitution
• Constitutional theory.

This authoritative text provides a framework for understanding individual liberty and governmental power and the institutional role played by the Supreme Court of the United States. Coverage in this new improved edition includes all the major topics of the subject: judicial review: commerce clause and state powers: federalism: separation of powers: congressional and executive powers: and individual civil rights and civil liberties. Includes diagrams that aid understanding of the fundamentals of our system of government. Extremely accessible and comprehensive - this is a paperback course in American Constitutional Law.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Welcome and overview
• The Supreme Court's authority and role
• Cases and controversies; justiciability
• The commerce power
• The dormant commerce clause
• Spending and taxing powers
• Separation of powers
• Fundamental rights and incorporation
• Due process
• State actions and the beginnings of constitutional law
• Equal protection
• Top ten exam tips
• Courage.

This efficient book takes the complex subject matter of Constitutional Law and makes it easier to understand and digest. World-renowned Villanova Law Dean and Professor Mark Alexander carefully explains the key concepts involved in Con Law and also brings it home with straightforward explanations of why you are reading and discussing the cases you are assigned every day. The subject matter runs the gamut from Marbury v. Madison and the structural side of the course to Due Process and Equal Protection. In addition, he provides exam-taking tips, and general words of guidance on how to make it through law school, and beyond, to a rewarding legal career.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface
• Introduction
• The role (and regulations) of the courts
• Implementing judicial review
• Defining the nature of the union : the federal structure and the necessary and proper clause
• Interstate commerce clause
• Taxing and spending powers
• Presidential power
• Constitutional rights and the states
• Economic regulation and the constitutional rights
• "The equal protection of the laws" : race and gender
• Fundamental rights protected under equal protection
• Fundamental rights : substantive due process
• Where structure meet rights : the reconstruction power.

United States Constitutional Law guides law students, political science students, and engaged citizens through the complexities of U.S. Supreme Court doctrine-and its relationship to constitutional politics-in key areas ranging from federalism and presidential power to equal protection and substantive due process. Rather than approach constitutional law as a static structure or imagine the Supreme Court as acting in isolation from society, the book elaborates and clarifies key constitutional doctrines while also drawing on scholarship in law and political science that relates the doctrines to large social changes such as industrialization, social movements such as civil rights and second-wave feminism, and institutional tensions between governmental actors. Combining legal analysis with historical narrative and sensitivity to political context, the book provides deeper understanding of how constitutional law arises, functions, and changes in a complex, often-divided society.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Forward-- Acknowledgments-- Introduction-- Part I. Preliminaries and Language:
• 1. The origins of originalism--
• 2. The meaning of meaning-- Part II. The Original Constitution:
• 3. Constitutional legitimacy--
• 4. The founders on founding--
• 5. Interpreting the constitution-- Part III. Objections and Recapitulation:
• 6. Lawyers as historians--
• 7. Brown v. board and originalism--
• 8. A coda on nonoriginalisms-- Epilogue.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the earth belongs to the living. His letter to James Madison is often quoted for the proposition that we should not be bound to the 'dead hand of the past', suggesting that the Constitution should instead be interpreted as a living, breathing document. Less well-known is Madison's response, in which he said the improvements made by the dead - including the US Constitution - form a debt against the living, who benefit from them. In this illuminating book, Ilan Wurman introduces Madison's concept of originalism to a new generation and shows how it has shaped the US Supreme Court in ways that are expected to continue following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the theory's leading proponents. It should be read by anyone seeking a better understanding of originalism and its ongoing influence on the constitutional jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The presidency : a return to dynasty?
• The vice presidency : nothing but maybe everything
• The congress : how to fix a broken branch
• The judiciary : who judges the judges?
• Criminal procedure : from O.J. to DNA
• Citizens dis-united : race, guns, gays, and more
• Constitutional anniversaries : remembering to remember
• Bill Clinton's drama : his partisan impeachment
• George W. Bush's drama : his un-popular election
• Barack Obama's drama : his signature statute.

A leading legal scholar addresses the most important constitutional controversies of the past two decades and illuminates the Constitution's spirit and ongoing relevance America's Constitution, Chief Justice John Marshall famously observed in McCulloch v. Maryland, aspires to endure for ages to come." The daily news has a shorter shelf life, and when the issues of the day involve momentous constitutional questions, present-minded journalists and busy citizens cannot always see the stakes clearly.In The Constitution Today , Akhil Reed Amar, America's preeminent constitutional scholar, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades and provides a passionate handbook for thinking constitutionally about today's headlines. Amar shows how the Constitution's text, history, and structure are a crucial repository of collective wisdom, providing specific rules and grand themes relevant to every organ of the American body politic. Prioritizing sound constitutional reasoning over partisan preferences, he makes the case for diversity-based affirmative action and a right to have a gun in one's home for self-protection, and against spending caps on independent political advertising and bans on same-sex marriage. He explains what's wrong with presidential dynasties, advocates a nuclear option" to restore majority rule in the Senate, and suggests ways to reform the Supreme Court. And he revisits three dramatic constitutional conflicts, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the contested election of George W. Bush, and the fight over Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, to show what politicians, judges, and journalists got right as events unfolded and what they missed.Leading readers through the particular constitutional questions at stake in each episode while outlining his abiding views regarding the Constitution's letter, its spirit, and the direction constitutional law must go, Amar offers an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand America's Constitution and its relevance today.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
A leading legal scholar addresses the most important constitutional controversies of the past two decades and illuminates the Constitution's spirit and ongoing relevanceWhen the stories that lead our daily news involve momentous constitutional questions, present-minded journalists and busy citizens cannot always see the stakes clearly. In The Constitution Today, Akhil Reed Amar, America's preeminent constitutional scholar, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades-from gun control to gay marriage, affirmative action to criminal procedure, presidential dynasties to Congressional dysfunction, Bill Clinton's impeachment to Obamacare. He shows how the Constitution's text, history, and structure are a crucial repository of collective wisdom, providing specific rules and grand themes relevant to every organ of the American body politic.Leading readers through the particular constitutional questions at stake in each episode while outlining his abiding views regarding the Constitution's letter, its spirit, and the direction constitutional law must go, Amar offers an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand America's Constitution and its relevance today.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• INTRODUCTION
• 1. AN OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE US CONSTITUTION From the Revolution to the Bill of Rights The Early National Period The Crisis over Slavery and the Civil War The Late Nineteenth Century and the Growth of the Modern State The New Deal Crisis and the New Constitutional Regime From the Reagan Revolution to the Present Conclusion Further Reading
• 2. THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS OF THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH Congress: Its Basic Structure and Roles The American Party System Political Parties and the Written Constitution Conduct of Elections Legislative Districting and Gerrymandering Candidate Selection and Gerrymandering Campaign Financing Constitutional Politics within Congress Conclusion Further Reading
• 3. THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH The President as Party Leader The President's Role in Legislation The Unitary Executive and the Modern Administrative State The Unitary Executive in Foreign Affairs Conclusion Further Reading
• 4. THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS OF THE JUDICIAL BRANCH Judicial Selection Judicial Review and Judicial Supremacy Political Constraints on the Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts Doctrinal Constraints on the Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts Standing Conclusion Further Reading
• 5. FEDERALISM AND THE REACH OF NATIONAL POWER State Governments and the US Constitution The Emergence of (Nearly) Plenary National Power The So-Called 'Federalism Revolution' of the 1990s and Beyond Federalism and the Spending Power Conclusion Further Reading
• 6. THE SUBSTANCE OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION The Starting Point Pragmatic and Realist Critiques The New Deal Reconstruction The Emergence of Modern Liberalism: Autonomy and Accommodation Lawyers and Rights Litigation: The Development of Support Structures Political Parties and Social Movements From Congress to the Courts: The Venues for Rights Protection The 'Backlash' Thesis Constitutional Rights in the Twenty-First Century Further Reading
• 7. THE PROCESSES OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE Formal Amendments Substance Constitutional Interpretation as a Mechanism of Constitutional Change Interpretive Methods: An Introduction Conclusion Constitutional Moments and Constitutional Change Constitutional Moments Concluding Thoughts Further Reading.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This is the second edition of Professor Tushnet's short critical introduction to the history and current meaning of the United States' Constitution. It is organised around wo themes: first, the US Constitution is old, short, and difficult to amend. Second, the Constitution creates a structure of political opportunities that allows political actors, icluding political parties, to pursue the preferred policy goals even to the point of altering the very structure of politics. Deploying these themes to examine the structure f the national government, federalism, judicial review, and individual rights, the book provides basic information about, and deeper insights into, the way he US constitutional system has developed and what it means today.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Are We All Originalists Now? I Hope Not!
• Part I. The New Originalism and Its Originalist Discontents
• Chapter 2. The New Originalist Manifesto
• Chapter 3. Fidelity, Change, and the Good Constitution
• Part II. A Moral Reading or Philosophic Approach
• Chapter 4. Fidelity Through a Moral Reading or Philosophic Approach
• Chapter 5. The Place of Precedent and Common Law Constitutional Interpretation
• Part III. Living Originalism and Living Constitutionalism as Moral Readings
• Chapter 6. Fidelity Through Living Originalism: Redeeming the Promises of the Constitution
• Chapter 7. Fidelity to Our Living Constitution: Honoring the Achievements of We the People
• Part IV. Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution
• Chapter 8. Is It Time to Rewrite the Constitution? Fidelity Through Perfecting Our Imperfect
• Constitution
• Epilogue
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In recent years, some have asked "Are we all originalists now?" and many have assumed that originalists have a monopoly on concern for fidelity in constitutional interpretation. In Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution, James Fleming rejects originalisms-whether old or new, concrete or abstract, living or dead. Instead, he defends what Ronald Dworkin called a "moral reading" of the United States Constitution, or a "philosophic approach" to constitutional interpretation. He refers to conceptions of the Constitution as embodying abstract moral and political principles-not codifying concrete historical rules or practices-and of interpretation of those principles as requiring normative judgments about how they are best understood-not merely historical research to discover relatively specific original meanings. Through examining the spectacular concessions that originalists have made to their critics, he shows the extent to which even they acknowledge the need to make normative judgments in constitutional interpretation. Fleming argues that fidelity in interpreting the Constitution as written requires a moral reading or philosophic approach. Fidelity commits us to honoring our aspirational principles, not following the relatively specific original meanings (or original expected applications) of the founders. Originalists would enshrine an imperfect Constitution that does not deserve our fidelity. Only a moral reading or philosophic approach, which aspires to interpret our imperfect Constitution so as to make it the best it can be, gives us hope of interpreting it in a manner that may deserve our fidelity.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Judicial review
• National legislative power
• Federal executive powers
• State power to regulate commerce
• Intergovernmental immunities
• Procedural due process
• Substantive protection of economic rights
• Substantive due process : fundamental rights
• Equal protection
• Freedom of expression
• The establishment clause
• The free exercise clause
• Second Amendment
• State action.

• List of Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• History
• 2. The Constitution from 1620 to the Early Republic/David Brian Robertson
• 3. Constitutional Developments from Jackson through Reconstruction/Michael Les Benedict
• 4. The Gilded Age through the Progressive Era/Ken I. Kersch
• 5. From the New Deal through the Reagan Revolution/L.A. Powe, Jr.
• 6. The Reagan Revolution to the Present/Thomas M. Keck
• Political Science
• 7. Constitutions as Basic Structure/Neil Komesar
• 8. The Constitutional Politics of Congress/Neal Devins
• 9. The Constitutional Politics of the Executive Branch/Mariah Zeisberg
• 10. The Constitutional Politics of the Judiciary/Justin Crowe
• 11. The Uneasy Place of Parties in the Constitutional Order/Russell Muirhead, and Nancy L. Rosenblum
• 12. Social Movements and the Constitution/Mark Tushnet
• 13. The Administrative State: Law, Democracy, and Knowledge/Adrian Vermeule
• 14. The Resilience of the American Federal System/Jenna Bednar
• 15. Empire/Bartholomew H. Sparrow
• 16. The Evolution of America's Fiscal Constitution/Bill White
• Law
• 17. The Executive Power/Stephen M. Griffin
• 18. Enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment/Ellen D. Katz
• 19. The Power of Judicial Review/Keith E. Whittington
• 20. Delegation, Accommodation, and the Permeability of Constitutional and Ordinary Law/Gillian E. Metzger
• 21. Federalism/Michael S. Greve
• Rights
• 22. Equality/ Julie Novkov
• 23. Liberty/James E. Fleming, and Linda C. McClain
• 24. Property in the United States Constitution/ Jedediah Purdy
• 25. Gender, Sex, and the U.S. Constitution/Leslie F. Goldstein
• 26. Racial Rights/ Girardeau A. Spann
• 27. Autonomy (of Individuals and Private Associations)/Dale Carpenter
• 28. Citizenship/Gerald L. Neuman
• 29. Religion/Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
• 30. Free Speech and Free Press/ Stephen M. Feldman
• 31. Criminal Procedure/Carol S. Steiker
• 32. Habeas Corpus/Paul D. Halliday
• 33. Native Americans/Matthew L. M. Fletcher
• 34. Positive Rights/Emily Zackin
• 35. The Right to Bear Arms/Saul Cornell
• Themes
• 36. Constitutionalism/Mark E. Brandon
• 37. Emergency Powers/Oren Gross
• 38. Constitutional Authority/Wayne D. Moore
• 39. Is Constitutional Law Really Law?/David A. Strauss
• 40. Constitutionalism Outside the Courts/Ernest A. Young
• 41. State Constitutionalism/John Dinan
• 42. Interpretation/Jamal Greene
• 43. Constitutional Change/Gerard N. Magliocca
• 44. The U.S. Constitution and International Law/Vicki C. Jackson
• 45. The Constitution in Comparative Perspective/Heinz Klug
• 46. Education and the Constitution/Elizabeth Beaumont
• 47. The Economics of Constitutional Law/Maxwell L. Stearns
• 48. The Constitution and United States Culture/Paul W. Kahn
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The Oxford Handbook of the U.S. Constitution offers a comprehensive overview and introduction to the U.S. Constitution from the perspectives of history, political science, law, rights, and constitutional themes, while focusing on its development, structures, rights, and role in the U.S. political system and culture. This Handbook enables readers within and beyond the U.S. to develop a critical comprehension of the literature on the Constitution, along with accessible and up-to-date analysis. The historical essays included in this Handbook cover the Constitution from 1620 right through the Reagan Revolution to the present. Essays on political science detail how contemporary citizens in the United States rely extensively on political parties, interest groups, and bureaucrats to operate a constitution designed to prevent the rise of parties, interest-group politics and an entrenched bureaucracy. The essays on law explore how contemporary citizens appear to expect and accept the exertions of power by a Supreme Court, whose members are increasingly disconnected from the world of practical politics. Essays on rights discuss how contemporary citizens living in a diverse multi-racial society seek guidance on the meaning of liberty and equality, from a Constitution designed for a society in which all politically relevant persons shared the same race, gender, religion and ethnicity. Lastly, the essays on themes explain how in a "globalized" world, people living in the United States can continue to be governed by a constitution originally meant for a society geographically separated from the rest of the "civilized world." Whether a return to the pristine constitutional institutions of the founding or a translation of these constitutional norms in the present is possible remains the central challenge of U.S. constitutionalism today.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Why talk about constitutional failure?
• Failure at what kind of thing?
• Failure at what, specifically?
• Constitutional failure : mostly (though not entirely) attitudinal
• Constitutional reform and constitutional thought.

Americans err in thinking that while their politics may be ailing, their Constitution is fine. Sick politics is a sure sign of constitutional failure. This is Sotirios Barber's message in Constitutional Failure. Public attitudes fostered by a consumer culture, constitution worship, the lack of a trusted leadership community, and academic historicism and value skepticism--these, this book tells us in clear and bracing terms, are at the root of our political dysfunction. Barber characterizes the Constitution as a plan of government--a set of means to public purposes like national security and prosperity. He argues that if the government is failing, it's fair to conclude that the plan is failing and that laws that are supposed to serve as means can't in reason continue to bind when they no longer work. He argues further that constitutional success depends ultimately on a stratum of diverse and self-critical citizens, who see each other as moral equals and parts of one national community. These citizens, with the politicians among them, would be good-faith contestants regarding the meaning of the common good and the most effective means to secure it. In this way--showing how the success of a constitutional democracy is more a matter of political attitudes than of institutional performance--Barber's book upends the conventional understanding of constitutional failure. In Barber's analysis, the apparent stability of formal constitutional institutions--usually interpreted as evidence of constitutional health--may actually indicate the defining element of constitutional failure: a mentally inert citizenry no longer capable of constitutional reflection and reform. At once concise and thorough in its analysis of the concept of constitutional failure and its accounts of a "healthy politics, " the corrosive impact of Madisonian checks and balances (as a substitute for trust-worthy leadership), and the outlook for meaningful reform, this book offers a carefully reasoned and provocative assessment of the viability of constitutional governance in the United States.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• Constituting
• Maintaining
• Failing
• Conclusion.

The U. S. Constitution begins with the soaring words "We the People, " but we, the people, have little to do with the document as most of us have come to know it. When most people think of the constitution they think of it as a legal instrument, the province of judges and lawyers, who alone possess the expertise and knowledge necessary to discern its elusive and complex meaning. This book outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This "Civic Constitution" constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming "the people" into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with the legal model, the "Juridic Constitution, " John E. Finn offers a comprehensive account of the Civic Constitution as a public affirmation of the shared principles of national self-identity, and as a particular vision of political community in which we the people play a significant and ongoing role in achieving a constitutional way of life. The Civic Constitution is the constitution of dialogical engagement, of contested meanings, of political principles, of education, of conversation. "Peopling the Constitution" seeks nothing less than a new interpretation of the American constitutional project in an effort to revive a robust understanding of citizenship. It considers the entire constitutional project, from its founding and maintenance to its failure, with insights into topics ranging from the practice of deliberative democracy and the meaning of citizenship, to constitutional fidelity, civic virtue, the separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional interpretation. The Civic Constitution, in Finn's telling, is primarily a political project requiring an active, engaged, and most importantly, constitutionally educated citizenry committed to the civic virtues of civility and tending. When we as citizens are unwilling or unable to tend to and sustain the Constitution, and when constitutional questions reduce to legal questions and obscure civic interests, constitutional rot results. And in post-9/11 America, Finn argues, constitutional rot has begun to set in. With its multi-dimensional vision of constitutional governance, Finn's book stands as a corrective to accounts that locate the Constitution in and conceive it essentially as a legal instrument, making a powerful and impassioned argument for restoring the people to their rightful place in the politics and practice of the Constitution.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The constitution and the Supreme Court
• Federalism at work : Congress and the national economy
• The scope of Congress's powers : taxing and spending, war powers, individual rights, and state autonomy
• The distribution of national powers
• Equality and the constitution
• Implied fundamental rights
• Freedom of expression
• The constitution and religion
• State action, baselines, and the problem of private power.

• The federal judicial power
• The federal legislative power
• The federal executive power
• Limits on state regulatory and taxing power
• The structure of the Constitution's protection of civil rights and civil liberties
• Economic liberties
• Equal protection
• Fundamental rights under due process and equal protection
• First Amendment : freedom of expression
• First Amendment : religion.

• The founding
• Foundational cases on constitutional structure : the Marshall court
• Enumerated powers
• Federalism limits on congressional power
• Federalism limits on state power
• The executive power
• The separation of powers
• The political question doctrine
• Standing, ripeness, and mootness
• Slavery, citizenship, and the due process of law
• Contracting the scope of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments
• Expanding the scope of the due process clause
• The equal protection of the law : racial discrimination
• Equal protection of the law : sex discrimination and other types
• Modern substantive due process
• Freedoms of speech and press
• Freedom of association
• The free exercise of religion
• No establishment of religion
• The right to keep and bear arms
• Taking private property for public use.

• Introduction: Constitutional principles
• Judicial review and its limits
• National legislative powers
• State power in American federalism
• Congress and the executive power
• Due process of law
• Equal protection
• Freedom of expression
• Freedom of religion
• State action
• Congressional legislation in aid of civil rights and liberties.