Customer Reviews

The Vote: Bush, Gore, and the Supreme Court

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In late November and early December of 2000, the American public got what started out as a promising lesson in civics and constitutional law. That is, until the outrageous decision in Bush v. Gore, which only a few serious scholars support. A couple of them contribute to this book and they are as unconvincing as ever. But then some, inluding the ubiquitous Richard Posner, are on record supporting other notoriously wrong decisions.

But you don't have to read the contributions of Epstein, Posner, or Yoo. The book is worth it for the Richard Pildes piece, "Democracy and Disorder"", a discussion of several Supreme Court decisions where the Court has made what I believe to be egregious and erroneous rulings that protect the existing two-party system from innovations that would arguably strengthen our democracy. Consistent dissenters from that line of cases are the two justices perhaps most likely to retire soon, Stevens and Ginzburg, who were the most vigorous of the dissenters in Bush v. Gore.

Why are these decisions erroneous and egregious? Well, for one thing, the Constitution does not even mention political parties. Pildes's point is that the Court seems afraid of democracy and any tendency toward disorder that may spring from such innovations as blanket primaries--primary elections systems that would allow voters to vote for candidates in either party. What he fails to develop is the point that these so-called "conservative" justices are mostly the very bloc that claims not to be making law, just interpreting the Constitution according to the intent of the framers.

Alas, another problem with Pildes's otherwise excellent essay/article is that it is plagued by academic jargon, including for example the use of the term "context" repeatedly where the word should be "circumstances", or "situation". This is tiresome and rises to the level of mannerism as the term is stretched to serve almost as a syntactical transition here and there and gratutiously employed to serve almost every purpose. For example, one of the footnotes suggest that the reader refer to another book "for greater context" on the legal questions.

Editor Sunstein also has his favorite vogue words, one of which seems to be "cabin" used as a verb to mean "confine" or "restrict". This too becomes tiresome.

The University of Chicago Law School is a very presitigious institution and the University itself is affiliated with a manual of style used by professional writers. So these stylistic errors, which are annoying in several of these articles, are unfortunate.

I concur with other reviewers that this book is for law students and lawyers, not the general public. That too is perhaps unfortunate in that the arguments and points could have been simplified and explained more clearly for a lay readership, leaving the abstruse legal matters to the footnotes. And speaking of the footnotes, and to end on a positive note, at least they are at the bottom of the page, not at the end of the book, though perhaps if the book had been aimed at a less specialized or lay reader, the notes would be less distracting at the end.