Working Paper Sites of Political Science
Public Law Readings List

Public Law
Patrick Fagan
Year 2000      

Arthur Ripstein. Equality, Responsibility, and the Law (Cambridge University Press, 1999).  Book Review

Terri Peretti. In Defense of a Political Court (Princeton University Press, 1999).  Book Review

James Calvi and Susan Coleman. American Law and Legal Systems (Prentice Hall, 2000): ISBN 0-13-083336-3.

Robert Carp and Ronald Stidham. The Federal Courts (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001): ISBN 1-56802-591-2.

The new edition of this textbook uses a similar format to earlier editions. It has chapters about the organization, jurisdiction, and personnel of the US federal judiciary, chapters on federal trial and appellate decision making behavior, and a chapter on the implementation and impact of decisions.  There is a concluding synthesis and a glossary (Annotation by Law and Politics Book Review).

Stanley Fish. The Trouble With Principle (Harvard University Press, 1999): ISBN 0-674-00534-1.

This volume consists largely of previously published materials - ten of sixteen chapters.  The chapters independently address a variety of legal and public policy topics such as freedom of speech, affirmative action, and aspects of expressive freedom.  As in another collection of his articles reviewed in the LPBR (Vol. 4 No. 3, March, 1994, pp. 33-35), the author advances an attack on all forms of moral and neutral principles in law and politics, and he asserts that any legal principle is inherently political, not principled (Annotation by Law and Politics Book Review).

Robert Carp and Ronald Stidham. Judicial Process in America (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001): ISBN 1-56802-509-2.

This book is the new edition of an undergraduate introduction to the judicial process previously reviewed in the LPBR (Vol. 5 No. 2, February, 1995, pp. 65-67).  This edition uses the same format as earlier editions and adds a few comparative examples, a set of queries at the beginning of each chapter, and a glossary (Annotation by Law and Politics Book Review).

Richard Posner. Frontiers of Legal Theory (Harvard University Press, 2001): ISBN 0-674-00485-X.

Kathy Laster. Law as Culture (Federation Press, 2001): ISBN 186287350X.

Chris Banks and John Green. Superintending Democracy : The courts and the political process (University of Akron Press, 2001): ISBN 1884836720.

Walter F. Murphy, C. Herman Pritchett, and Lee Epstein (eds). Courts, Judges, and Politics : An introduction to the judicial process (McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2001):  ISBN 0-07-044167-7.

Designed for undergraduates, the new edition of this classic text-reader on the judicial process contains most of the same chapter titles as previous editions.  However, there are new chapters on "Courts in Constitutional Democracies" and "The Bar," and some reorganization of the other chapters. Many of the sections of commentary have been significantly revised.  The majority of the selected readings are new, especially in the chapters on "Judicial Selection and Retention," "Instruments of Judicial Power," "Precedents and Legal Reasoning," "The Processes of Judicial Decision Making," and " The Impact of Judicial Decisions."