Book Description

The new edition of Farber, Eskridge, Frickey, and Schacter's Cases and Materials on Constitutional Law exploits two of the most exciting developments in Constitutional Law teaching in the last thirty years: the judiciary's dramatic engagement with social movements and key political debates, and academic and judicial deployment of original meaning as a central methodology. Thus, the new edition presents a most systematic introduction of original meaning methodology for law students, starting with the evolution of "originalism" in response to the academic debates over Brown v. Board of Education, and continuing with in-depth examination of what original meaning teaches us about the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the First and Second Amendments, the Commerce Clause and other authorizations for congressional regulation, and the separation of powers. The new edition provides in-depth treatment of the most exciting issues in constitutional law today--including the validity of affirmative action, the continuing battle over abortion restrictions, the recognition of same sex marriage and the continuing clash between claims based on gay rights and those based on religious freedom, the expanded use of the First Amendment to limit economic regulation, more aggressive deployment of justiciability limitations based upon Article III, and issues of presidential power posed by the current Administration as well as its recent predecessors.