Courting Disaster: The Supreme Court and the Unmaking of American Law - Softcover

Martin Garbus is one of the country's leading legal commentators and trial lawyers, appearing before the Supreme Court on numerous occasions and representing high-profile clients from Lenny Bruce to Václav Havel. He lives in New York City.

Garbus sees the Rehnquist Court as undermining the ability of both the Federal judiciary and especially Congress to play a prominent role in the progressive evolution of the modern state. A trial attorney who has appeared frequently as a legal commentator on NBC and CNBC, Garbus decries the Court's recent tendency to overturn congressional legislation by declaring unconstitutional the provisions of various bipartisan acts across a wide range of social, economic, and political spectra. Carefully explicating the conflicting Court perceptions of federalism, he paints a vivid picture of internal conflict among the justices. For each major point of constitutional contention, he considers how and where the case originally arose, issues at trial, appellate review, arguments before the Court, the nine justices and where they stand, the majority opinion, and the minority dissent. The author also properly assesses the impact of the dissents, should these someday become the majority viewpoint of the narrowly divided Court. In the current context, the ability of the federal government to exercise its Article I powers is rigidly constrained. As Garbus shows, attempts by Congress to assert its power over gun control, as in the Brady Bill, or to help rape victims, as in the Women Against Violence Act, will be, and have been, struck down as unconstitutional when legislated under the pretext of interstate commerce. Garbus spends more time analyzing case law, while Noonan emphasizes the Court's resolution of constitutional disputes, so the two books complement each other nicely. Highly recommended.
Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York
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