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An analysis by recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court's supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution.

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Introduction -- I. A Theory of Regulation -- 1. Typical Justifications for Regulation -- 2. Cost-of-Service Ratemaking -- 3. Historically Based Price Regulation -- 4. Allocation under a Public Interest Standard -- 5. Standard Setting -- 6. Historically Based Allocation -- 7. Individualized Screening -- 8. Alternatives to Classical Regulation -- 9. General Guidelines for Policy Makers -- II. Appropriate Solutions -- 10. Match and Mismatch -- 11. Mismatch: Excessive Competition and Airline Regulation -- 12. Mismatch: Excessive Competition and the Trucking Industry -- 13. Mismatch: Rent Control and Natural Gas Field Prices -- 14. Partial Mismatch: Spillovers and Environmental Pollution -- 15. Problems of a Possible Match: Natural Monopoly and Telecommunications -- III. Practical Reform -- 16. From Candidate to Reform -- 17. Generic Approaches to Regulatory Reform -- Appendix 1. The Regulatory Agencies -- Appendix 2. A Note on Administrative Law -- Further Reading -- Notes -- Index

Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution's text or to the eighteenth-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circumstances--an approach that will best demonstrate to the public that the Constitution continues to serve us well.--

"A landmark dissenting opinion arguing against the death penalty Does the death penalty violate the Constitution? In Against the Death Penalty, Justice Stephen G. Breyer argues that it does: that it is carried out unfairly and inconsistently, and thus violates the ban on "cruel and unusual punishments" specified by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. "Today's administration of the death penalty," Breyer writes, "involves three fundamental constitutional defects: (1) serious unreliability, (2) arbitrariness in application, and (3) unconscionably long delays that undermine the death penalty's penological purpose. Perhaps as a result, (4) most places within the United States have abandoned its use." This volume contains Breyer's dissent in the case of Glossip v. Gross, which involved an unsuccessful challenge to Oklahoma's use of a lethal-injection drug because it might cause severe pain. Justice Breyer's legal citations have been edited to make them understandable to a general audience, but the text retains the full force of his powerful argument that the time has come for the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty. Breyer was joined in his dissent from the bench by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Their passionate argument has been cited by many legal experts - including fellow Justice Antonin Scalia - as signaling an eventual Court ruling striking down the death penalty. A similar dissent in 1963 by Breyer's mentor, Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, helped set the stage for a later ruling, imposing what turned out to be a four-year moratorium on executions"--