| Description |
xiii, 290 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
The Supreme Court and America's democracy deficit -- The court supreme : Bush v. Gore and the judicial assault on democracy -- The people have no right to vote and no right to rule -- Unequal protection : the Supreme Court's racial double standard in redistricting -- America's signature exclusion : how democracy is made safe for the two-party system -- Arrogant Orwellian bureaucrats : how the electoral-industrial complex controls America's political debates and gerrymanders your mind -- Schooling for democracy -- Democracy and the corporation -- Unflagging patriotism : the people, the flag, and the Constitution -- Overruling the court and re-righting America |
| Summary |
"Thanks to a strong, bipartisan freedom of speech movement, the First Amendment is in good shape. But where's America's movement to protect political democracy? Certainly not on the Supreme Court, where the current five-Justice conservative majority has created one of the most ferociously activist and anti-democratic Courts in history. No American expects the justices to uphold every law passed by a popular majority, but we do expect them at least to defend basic democratic process and values. For the Court to decide that the "individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote" - as it did in Bush v Gore - undermines basic principles Americans have been fighting for since the nation began. By measuring the Rehnquist court against earlier twentieth-century courts, Raskin cuts through the flabby reasoning, double standards, and "moral dyslexia" of the current majority. Other decisions, some famous and some obscure, have announced that citizens have no constitutionally protected right to an education (much less an equal one), that geometrically imperfect congressional districts with an African American or Hispanic majority are presumptively unconstitutional, that public television channels can sponsor closed debates between Democrats and Republicans which exclude Independent candidates, and that private corporations have a constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of cash to influence public initiative and referendum campaigns. While skewing our politics, the conservative Court routinely strikes down progressive federal legislation, turning the Constitution thoroughly against national democratic purposes. Taking on the elitist and reactionary impulses of contemporary conservatism, "Overruling Democracy" lays out a compelling plan for "we, the people" to overrule the Court with some basic constitutional changes in the new century. Raskin's aggressive "constitutional patriotism" shows the way forward to a more democratic constitution, judiciary, and nation." -- Bookjacket |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
United States. Supreme Court.
|
|
Political questions and judicial power -- United States.
|
| LC no. |
2002011222 |
| ISBN |
0415934397 : |
|
