Suchergebnisse

Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been supplanted by originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed as it was in the eighteenth century--that judges must adhere to the original understandings of the fo

"This casebook provides the most complete treatment available of constitutional tort actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Bivens. The elaborate doctrines of official immunity are examined in detail, as is the possibility of direct governmental liability under Monell v. Dept. of Social Services. [This edition] also explores the relation of § 1983 to the Eleventh Amendment, qualified immunity, and the award of attorney's fees. It also provides an introduction to actions under other Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts (§§ 1981, 1982, and 1985), under modern statutes such as Title VII and Title IX (which add sex discrimination to previously prohibited grounds of discrimination), and to structural reform litigation (usually undertaken in the form of class actions)."--

Why stigmatizing and confining a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to all Americans.The United States, home to five percent of the world's population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate--at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising--is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury argues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans--vastly disproportionately black and brown--with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes.