Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 1888-1910

Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States #8

by Owen M. Fiss

A highly interpretive and eminently readable study of the Supreme Court during the period in which Melvin Fuller was Chief Justice, offering a complete account of the cases the Court saw during one of the most tumultuous times in U.S. history. The legacy of the Supreme Court at the turn of the century has largely been negative: decisions such as Lochner v. New York (1905), Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), In re Debs (1895), and Plessy v. Ferguson have been seen by subsequent generations of lawyers and judges as embodying a judicial method and philosophy that should be avoided at all costs. This book places these decisions in their historical context. It rejects the crude instrumental interpretation of these decisions and explains them as the expression of a conception of liberty that has its roots in the founding of the nation.

Genres: Law

446 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Owen Fiss is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law of Yale University. He was educated at Dartmouth, Oxford, and Harvard. He clerked for Thurgood Marshall (when Marshall was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) and later for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He also served in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Before coming to Yale, Professor Fiss taught at the University of Chicago. At Yale he teaches procedure, legal theory, and constitutional law and is the author of many articles and books on these subjects.

Reviews

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiss makes a lot of interesting points that other scholars do (would?) not about the major topics of constitutional jurisprudence of the Fuller Court. I'm not sure he really brings the title (subtitle?) of his work to the fore. What makes the "state" in that era "modern?" What were the problems of the "modern state?" Do they have a coherent and limited sets of causes? Did the Supreme Court of that era increase or decrease those problems? It's a provocative title, I think.

Still, it's thorough and good. This is probably the work for interesting conclusions about the Fuller Court.