Law's infamy : understanding the Canon of bad law / edited by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sarat, Austin, editor.

Douglas, Lawrence, editor.

Umphrey, Martha Merrill, editor.

Series:

NYU scholarship online.

NYU scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Supreme Court.

United States.

Justice, Administration of--United States.

Justice, Administration of.

Judicial process--United States.

Judicial process.

Political questions and judicial power--United States.

Political questions and judicial power.

Law reform--United States.

Law reform.

Constitutional law--United States--Cases.

Constitutional law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (286 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2021]

Summary:

From the murder of George Floyd to the systematic dismantling of voting rights, our laws and their implementation are actively shaping the course of our nation. But however abhorrent a legal decision might be - whether Dred Scott v. Sanford or Plessy v. Ferguson - the stories we tell of the law's failures refer to their injustice and rarely label them in the language of infamy. Yet in many instances, infamy is part of the story law tells about citizens' conduct. Such stories of individual infamy work on both the social and legal level to stigmatize and ostracize people, to mark them as unredeemably other. 'Law's Infamy' seeks to alter that course by making legal actions and decisions the subject of an inquiry about infamy. Taken together, the essays demonstrate how legal institutions themselves engage in infamous actions and urge that scholars and activists to label them as such.

Contents:

Telling the story of law's infamy : an introduction / Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey

1. After law's infamy : judicial self-legitimation in the aftermath of judicial evil / Justin Collings

2. "The courts of the conqueror" : colonialism, the Constitution, and the time of redemption / Sherally Munshi

3. Supreme Court precedent and the politics of repudiation / Robert L. Tsai

4. Law's infamy in the U.S. "War on Terror" / Richard L. Abel

5. Law's infamy : Ashker v. Governor of California and the failures of solitary confinement reform / Keramet Reiter

6. Fame, infamy, and canonicity in American constitutional law / Paul Horwitz

Acknowledgments - About the contributors

About the editors

Index.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on May 9, 2022).

ISBN:

1-4798-1211-0

OCLC:

1281988720