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    Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View
    Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View
    Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View
    Audiobook10 hours

    Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View

    Written by Justice Stephen Breyer

    Narrated by Luis Moreno

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer delivers an impassioned argument for the proper role of America's highest judicial body. Examining historic and contemporary decisions by the Court, Breyer highlights the rulings that have bolstered public confidence as well as the missteps that have triggered distrust. What emerges is a unique approach-certain to be admired for years to come-to interpreting the Constitution.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 8, 2010
    ISBN9781449839857
    Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View

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    Reviews for Making Our Democracy Work

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      Lengthy, wordy, tedious.
      Would be more palatable if it weren’t so loquacious.
      Suggestions, boil it down. Get to the kernel of the issue.
      I am not a lawyers nor do I have the ambition to become one.
    • 4/5
      Excellent overview of some of the court cases of the past and how the court interacts with the public and the other two branches of the government. It's also interesting to consider this book beside Lazarus's Closed Chambers, which suggests that the court is oftentimes not collegial. Stephen Breyer (a current US Supreme Court justice) indicates that the discussions are collegial and that the justices do their best to see the value in all of the other justices points of view.
    • 3/5
      Reviews of cases are the book's strong points. Part II, which is light on that element, focusing more on civics discussion, is a bit tedious. The author could have been a bit more forthcoming about supreme court processes -- does anyone really believe Bush v. Gore had no political overtones for the Court?
    • 4/5
      Aimed at the non-specialist, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer's book does a good job at using some of the more important cases in the history of the Court to sketch his personal approach to the Constitution. He then discusses these cases in relation to how he formed his moderate, consequentialist, and pragmatic approach to interpreting the Constitution and various statutes.Part I considers how the Constitution can ensure a workable democracy while at the same time maintaining its legitimizing power. More to the point, "why should a democracy, a political system based on representation and accountability, entrust the final or near-final making of such highly significant decisions to judges who are unelected, independent, and insulated from direct impact of public opinion?" (p. 4). Some of the cases Breyer looks in this section are Marbury v. Madison, the Cherokee Indian cases of the 1830s, Brown v. Board of Education, Dred Scott, and Bush v. Gore, and uses these cases to show the growth of popular acceptance of court decisions, beginning with Jefferson's refusal acknowledge Marbury's commission to the seeming blanket acceptance of the fact that the Supreme Court chose the President in 2000. The chronological discussion smartly considers the changing contours of public opinion and describes how the Court, an institution that began with almost no sense of judicial legitimacy, constructed it slowly over time. That Breyer considers the case of legitimacy first is telling, and it is obvious that Breyer knows that the Court is powerless without this assumed legitimacy.Part II discusses some of the ways in which Justice Breyer believes the Court must maintain the public trust it has earned. Here, he spells out the differences he perceives between a "text-based" approach (which he argues against) and a "purposes-and-consequences" approach (which he advocates). The former seems roughly equivalent to an unchanging, ahistorical originalism on the order of what Justice Scalia argues for, while the latter resembles a living Constitution. Here, he discusses the role of federalism, the roles and specialties of other courts, and stare decisis.Part III discusses individual liberties, especially the cases coming out of World War II (Korematsu and Hirabayashi) and executive power and accountability (Rasul, Hamdi, Hamdan, and Boumediene).For someone who might be familiar with the history of the jurisprudence discussed above, as any law school graduate would be, the historical parts of the book will already be extremely familiar. While not an attorney myself, I had the pleasure of discussing this book with my partner who is one, which made reading it all the more enlightening, and the source of a lot of exciting discussion. I have always admired Breyer's moderate, pragmatic decision-making and read this book mostly to see how he constructed this approach. It's a really good synthesis of the history and opinion that gives a lot of insight into Breyer's opinions, and will shed some light on Breyer's hermeneutic decisions even for those familiar with the case law.
    • 4/5
      In this book, Justice Stephen Breyer attempts to explain how the Supreme Court attained it's legitimacy, how it retains it's legitimacy, and how individual justices arrive at decisions. He uses specific cases as examples and doesn't hide his own views or decisions. The writing style is interesting for what could be a fairly dry subject. I thought that the methods for deciding a case were interesting. Among other things he discusses using legal precedent, historical customs, and original intent. He also discusses that certain courts are expert in certain areas and their decisions should be trusted when possible. He ends the book by pleading the case for better instruction in civics/government in public schools, stating that our democracy and specifically the court's role in it can only keep it's legitimacy if the public understands the processes it uses and the role it plays.