The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States - 9780195176612

The Supreme Court has continued to write constitutional history in the years since publication of the first edition of The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1992. Two new justices - Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer - have joined the high court and more than eight hundred cases have been decided. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist presided over the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, and the Court as a whole played a decisive and controversial role in the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. Under Rehnquist's leadership, a bare majority of the justices has rewritten significant areas of the law dealing with federalism, privacy, sovereign immunity, and the commerce power. In addition, a good deal of scholarship has appeared on many of the topics treated in the original Companion.
The second edition of the Companion includes more than twelve hundred articles on all aspects of the Court's history, personnel, and operations. There are biographies of each justice and entries on important cases, issues, and the workings and minutiae of the Court.
There are fully updated treatments of such crucial areas of constitutional law as abortion, freedom of religion, school desegregation, freedom of speech, voting rights, and the rights of the accused. These developments make the second edition of this accessible and authoritative guide essential for judges, lawyers, academics, journalists, and anyone interested in the impact of the Court's decisions on American society.