United States Supreme Court Decisions » (Second Edition)

The late Kermit Hall was President of the State University of New York at Albany.
James W. Ely Jr. is Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Professor of Law, and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University.

The Supreme Court has been the site of some of the great debates of American history, from child labor and prayer in the schools, to busing and abortion. The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions offers lively and insightful accounts of the most important cases ever argued before the Court, from Marbury v. Madison and Scott v. Sandford (the Dred Scott decision) to Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.

This new edition of the Guide contains more than 450 entries on major Supreme Court cases, including 53 new entries on the latest landmark rulings. Among the new entries are Bush v. Gore, Nixon v. United States, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. Four decisionsHamdi v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Rasu v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padillaare considered in a single essay entitled Enemy Combatant Cases. Arranged alphabetically and written by eminent legal scholars, each entry provides the United States Reports citation, the date the case was argued and decided, the vote of the Justices, who wrote the opinion for the Court, who concurred, and who dissented. More important, the entries feature an informative account of the particulars of the case, the legal and social background, the reasoning behind the Courts decision, and the cases impact on American society. For this edition, Ely has added an extensive Further Reading section and revised the Case Index and Topical Index.

For anyone interested in the great controversies of our time, this invaluable book is a must reada primer on the epic constitutional battles that have informed American life.

Savannah Schroll Guz - Library Journal

In this expansion of the 2000 edition, Hall (Oxford Companion to Supreme Court) and Ely (Bill of Rights in Modern America) assemble the scholarship of 161 field specialists, who summarize the Supreme Court's 440 most significant cases. Scholar-signed, multiparagraph entries are alphabetized by case name, include argued and decided dates, and detail vote divisions. The book closes with a glossary, an appendix containing the complete Constitution, a chronology of justices since 1789, and a list of presidential appointments. An outstanding single-volume reference.