Regulatory Rights

"We have often heard - with particular frequency during recent Supreme Court nomination hearings - that justices should not create constitutional rights, but should instead enforce the rights that the Constitution enshrines. In Regulatory Rights, Larry Yackle sets out to convince readers that such arguments fundamentally misconceive both the work that justices do and the character of the American Constitution in whose name they do it. Justices rely on their judgment about the public interest and needs of the day, rather than rigid foundations. That is, it is the justices who make the Constitution. It matters who sits on the Supreme Court, Yackle argues, precisely because justices create individual constitutional rights." "Traversing a wide range of Supreme Court decisions that established crucial precedents about racial discrimination, the death penalty, and sexual freedom, Yackle contends that the rights we enjoy are neither more nor less than what the justices choose to make of them. He argues that there is no serious alternative to the hard-minded, problem-solving judicial judgment that gives content to rights. As a result, there are neither good justices who adhere to the Constitution nor bad justices who don't; rather, there are only justices who shape the meaning of the document with each decision. Regulatory Rights is a read that will be heatedly debated by all those interested in constitutional law and the judiciary."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.