The Structure and the New Deal

In a robust new narrative, G. Edward White challenges the reigning understanding of twentieth-century Supreme Court docket selections, significantly within the New Deal interval. He does this by rejecting such deceptive characterizations as “liberal,” “conservative,” and “reactionary,” and by reexamining a number of key matters in constitutional regulation.

Via a detailed studying of sources and evaluation of the minds and sensibilities of a wide selection of justices, together with Holmes, Brandeis, Sutherland, Butler, Van Devanter, and McReynolds, White rediscovers the world of early-twentieth-century constitutional regulation and jurisprudence. He supplies a counter-story to that of the triumphalist New Sellers. The deep conflicts over constitutional concepts that occurred within the first half of the 20th century are sensitively recovered, and the morality play of excellent liberals vs. mossbacks is changed. That is the one totally researched and absolutely realized historical past of the constitutional thought and apply of all of the Supreme Court docket justices through the turbulent interval that made America trendy.