Neoconservative Politics and the Supreme Court

A remarkably concise and accessible overview first of the rise of neoconservatism, and then of its impact on the Supreme Court. Consistently illuminating and challenging. ~Sanford Levinson,author of Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance

A helpful explanation of the Supreme Court's latest lurch to the right. By showing how many of the Court's latest decisions can be seen as expressions of the neoconservative impulse, Feldman exposes how deeply politics, personalities, and convictions shape judicial behavior. ~Richard Delgado,University Professor of Law, Seattle University

In forthright prose laying out a provocative and subtle argument, Feldman places todays Supreme Court in a broad intellectual and historical context, showing how the Courts conservatives cut and paste themes of neo-conservative nostalgia for an irretrievable past of republican democracy into more traditionalist conservative responses to the pluralist democracy we have and are likely to continue to have. ~Mark Tushnet,author of A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law

In this concise and clearly written book, Stephen M. Feldman argues that the conservative ascendance in the United States since the presidency of Ronald Reagan can be understood as an effort to reestablish the legal and political order that existed prior to the New Deal. He labels this pre-New Deal order 'republican democracy,' distinct from the 'pluralist democracy' that characterizes our politics since 1937. The heart of the book is the analysis of the Supreme Court and how its conservative majority has pushed this agenda....[T]his is a provocative and compelling argument. ~Robert B. Horwitz, Political Science Quarterly

This is a well-written, interesting, and useful book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. ~CHOICE