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For most Americans, habeas corpus is the cornerstone of our legal
system: the principal constitutional check on arbitrary government
power, allowing an arrested person to challenge the legality of his
detention. In a study that could not be more timely, Justin Wert
reexamines this essential individual right and shows that habeas
corpus is not necessarily the check that we've assumed. Habeas
corpus, it emerges, is as much a tool of politics as it is of law.
In this first study of habeas corpus in an American political
context, Wert shifts our collective emphasis from the judicial to
the political—toward the changes in the writ influenced by
Congress, the president, political parties, state governments,
legal academics, and even interest groups. By doing so, he reveals
how political regimes have used habeas corpus both to undo the
legacies of their predecessors and to establish and enforce their
own vision of constitutional governance. Tracing the history of the
writ from the Founding to Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush,
Wert illuminates crucial developmental moments in its evolution. He
demonstrates that during the antebellum period, Reconstruction,
Gilded Age, Great Society, and the ongoing war on terrorism, habeas
corpus has waxed and waned in harmony with the interests of
majoritarian politics. Along the way, Wert identifies and explains
the political context of fine points of law that many political
scientists and historians may not be aware of—such as the
exhaustion rule requiring that a federal habeas participant must
first exhaust all possible claims for relief in state court, a
maneuver by which the post-Reconstruction Court abandoned
supervision of race relations in the South. Especially in light of
the new scrutiny of habeas corpus prompted by the Guantnamo
detainees, Wert’s book is essential for broadening our
understanding of how law and politics continue to intersect after
9/11. Brimming with fresh insights into constitutional development
and regime theory, it shows that the Great Writ of Liberty may not
be so great as we have supposed—because while it has the
potential to enforce conceptions of rights that are consistent with
the best ideals of American politics, it also has the potential to
enforce its worst aspects as well.
On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision
in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidating a key provision of voting
rights law. The decision - the culmination of an eight-year battle
over the power of Congress to regulate state conduct of elections -
marked the closing of a chapter in American politics. That chapter
had opened a century earlier in the case of Guinn v. United States,
which ushered in national efforts to knock down racial barriers to
the ballot. A detailed and timely history, The Rise and Fall of the
Voting Rights Act analyzes changing legislation and the future of
voting rights in the United States. In tracing the development of
the Voting Rights Act from its inception, Charles S. Bullock III,
Ronald Keith Gaddie, and Justin J. Wert begin by exploring the
political and legal aspects of the Jim Crow electoral regime.
Detailing both the subsequent struggle to enact the law and its
impact, they explain why the Voting Rights Act was necessary. The
authors draw on court cases and election data to bring their
discussion to the present with an examination of the 2006 revision
and renewal of the act, and its role in shaping the southern
political environment in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections,
when Barack Obama was chosen. Bullock, Gaddie, and Wert go on to
closely evaluate the 2013 Shelby County decision, describing how
the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court created an appellate
environment that made the act ripe for a challenge. Rigorous in its
scholarship and thoroughly readable, this book goes beyond history
and analysis to provide compelling and much-needed insight into the
ways voting rights legislation has shaped the United States. The
Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act illuminates the historical
roots - and the human consequences - of a critical chapter in U.S.
legal history.
On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision
in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidating a key provision of voting
rights law. The decision - the culmination of an eight-year battle
over the power of Congress to regulate state conduct of elections -
marked the closing of a chapter in American politics. That chapter
had opened a century earlier in the case of Guinn v. United States,
which ushered in national efforts to knock down racial barriers to
the ballot. A detailed and timely history, The Rise and Fall of the
Voting Rights Act analyzes changing legislation and the future of
voting rights in the United States. In tracing the development of
the Voting Rights Act from its inception, Charles S. Bullock III,
Ronald Keith Gaddie, and Justin J. Wert begin by exploring the
political and legal aspects of the Jim Crow electoral regime.
Detailing both the subsequent struggle to enact the law and its
impact, they explain why the Voting Rights Act was necessary. The
authors draw on court cases and election data to bring their
discussion to the present with an examination of the 2006 revision
and renewal of the act, and its role in shaping the southern
political environment in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections,
when Barack Obama was chosen. Bullock, Gaddie, and Wert go on to
closely evaluate the 2013 Shelby County decision, describing how
the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court created an appellate
environment that made the act ripe for a challenge. Rigorous in its
scholarship and thoroughly readable, this book goes beyond history
and analysis to provide compelling and much-needed insight into the
ways voting rights legislation has shaped the United States. The
Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act illuminates the historical
roots - and the human consequences - of a critical chapter in U.S.
legal history.
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