The single most important issue in American constitutional law is the role the Supreme Court should play in interpretation of the constitution. This issue has been a source of controversy since at least 1803, when Chief Justice John Marshall proclaimed that the Supreme Court could declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. But public attention has been refocused by the recent debate between Attorney General Edwin Meese and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. The Attorney General admonished the Justices to confine themselves to strict construction of the Constitution-to apply the Constitution as the framers intended. Justice Brennan rejected this as errant and arrogant because the framers had certainly not thought about the specific problems facing the country today.
In "The Art of Judging," Professor James A. Bond characterizes this controversy as a debate between advocates of two different styles of judging. Judicial "craftsmen" look backward for guidance: to the text of the Constitution, the original understanding of that text, and the historical experiences of the American people. Judicial " statesmen" look forward for guidance: to moral and political ideals and notions of the public good. And only the former style, Professor Bond argues, can preserve both the rule of law and constitution in a democracy. Judicial statesmanship undermines the power of the majority to make the law and thereby lessens people's willingness to accept constitutional limitations on the majority rule that make it palatable to those in the minority. But judicial craftsmanship respects the authority of the people at the same time that it enforces constitutional limitations on that authority.
" James A. Bond" is the Dean of the University of Puget Sound School of Law, and has taught at Wake Forest University and Washington and Lee University. From his youthful involvement in the civil rights movement to his long tenure as President of the Fund for the Protection of Individual Rights, he has been involved in helping persons struggling against the overwhelming power of the state. As a student and scholar of constitutional law, he has focused primarily on how the Supreme Court should exercise its mandate to protect the individual from the state.

Riots, insurrections, guerrilla movements, civil wars--all forms of internal conflict are increasing throughout the world. The conditions that breed domestic violence in the Third World persist, and events in Ulster and Quebec have shown that more advanced industrial countries are not immune from civil disorder. The subject of James E. Bond's book--how can we regulate civil guerrilla warfare?--is therefore one of the most critical questions of our time. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Riots, insurrections, guerrilla movements, civil wars--all forms of internal conflict are increasing throughout the world. The conditions that breed domestic violence in the Third World persist, and events in Ulster and Quebec have shown that more advanced industrial countries are not immune from civil disorder. The subject of James E. Bond's book--how can we regulate civil guerrilla warfare?--is therefore one of the most critical questions of our time. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Southern ratification debate on the 14th Amendment was a part of the bitter, decade-long struggle to reconstruct and later redeem the South. This book makes clear that amidst all the conflict and cacophony of the period, the commands of the 14th Amendment were widely and uniformly understood. The three great clauses of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment were intended both to guarantee everyone the fundamental rights of citizenship and personhood and to nationalize the protection of those rights within the federal structure ordained by the Constitution. That means that the states were to retain primary responsibility for defining and protecting those rights, subject only to the requirement that they treat all fairly and equally. Rooted in the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence rather than in the text of the Bill of Rights, the commands of the 14th Amendment were intended to protect liberty in an inseparable union of states. This study lets the participants in these events speak for themselves: in official reports; in party platforms and campaign speeches; in resolutions from meetings, rallies, and conventions; in editorials and letters to the editor; and in private diaries and personal correspondence. Much of the documentary evidence in this book is being published for the first time.