Alexander M. Bickel – författare

“This short but provocative volume… is a fitting testimony to the author’s extraordinary, though tragically brief, career as a constitutional scholar, lawyer and teacher.  In just a hundred and a half literate pages, we are treated to vintage Bickel insight into every major political issue of the decade, from the civil rights movement, to the Warren Court, through the frenetic university upheavals, and—inevitably—to Watergate…. A tapestry woven by a master of subtle color and texture.”—Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Times Book Review“Presents the core of [Bickel’s] legal and political philosophy…. In the five essays that compose this volume Bickel explores the relationship between morality and law, examining the role of the Constitution and Supreme Court in our political process, the nature of citizenship, the First Amendment, civil disobedience, and the moral authority of the intellectual…. All will be stimulated by Bickel’s thoughtful message.” –Perspective“[Bickel] wrote with astonishing clarity.  It takes no legal training to understand his thinking about the law.  Nor does it take a willingness to agree with him.  All that’s required of the reader of this important ‘little’ book is a concern that rivals Bickel’s about the future of American society.” –Newsweek“An illuminating, often a moving book, with all of Professor Bickel’s rare ability to bring law to life in vivid words.”—Anthony LewisAlexander M. Bickel, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, taught at Yale from 1956 until his death in 1974.

Timeless questions about the role of the Supreme Court in the American political and legal system are raised in the late Alexander Bickel’s characteristically astute analysis of the work of the Warren Court. He takes issue with the Court’s view that its role should be to move the American polity in the direction of perfect equality and expresses his preference for "a more faithful adherence to the method of analytical reason, and a less confident reliance on the intuitive capacity to identify the course of progress."First published in 1970, this book made news with its prediction that the Court’s best-known decision, in Brown v. Board of Education, might be headed for "irrelevance." Bickel charged the Court, particularly in its segregation and reapportionment cases, with being irrational, inconsistent, and even incoherent and argued that its decisions would lead to unwise centralization of government. He explored the limitations on the role of the court in stimulating social progress and concluded that the Warren Court had intervened in matters of social policy where the political process, not judicial action, should apply."Process is what especially concerned him – the relationship between the legal and the political process in a country where the two are uniquely intermixed. If he criticized something done by the courts for the stated purpose of speeding school desegregation, that did not mean that he favored state-imposed racial discrimination; in fact he abhorred it. He was concerned, rather, about trying to solve complicated problems by legal formulas instead of leaving them to the give-and-take of the political process."-- Anthony Lewis

This classic book on the role of the Supreme Court in our democracy traces the history of the Court, assessing the merits of various decisions along the way.  Eminent law professor Alexander Bickel begins with Marbury vs. Madison, which he says gives shaky support to judicial review, and concludes with the school desegregation cases of 1954, which he uses to show the extent and limits of the Court’s power.  In this way he accomplishes his stated purpose: “to have the Supreme Court’s exercise of judicial review better understood and supported and more sagaciously used.”  The book now includes new foreword by Henry Wellington.Reviews of the Earlier Edition:“Dozens of books have examined and debated the court’s role in the American system.  Yet there remains great need for the scholarship and perception, the sound sense and clear view Alexander Bickel brings to the discussion…. Students of the court will find much independent and original thinking supported by wide knowledge.  Many judges could read the book with profit.” –Donovan Richardson, Christian Science Monitor“The Yale professor is a law teacher who is not afraid to declare his own strong views of legal wrongs… One of the rewards of this book is that Professor Bickel skillfully knits in quotations from a host of authorities and, since these are carefully documented, the reader may look them up in their settings.  Among the author’s favorites is the late Thomas Reed Powell of Harvard, whose wit flashes on a good many pages.” –Irving Dillard, Saturday ReviewAlexander M. Bickel was professor of law at Yale University.