Constitutional Law: Cases Approaches and Applications

About this book

To view or download the 2020 Supplement to this book click here. Constitutional Law: Cases Approaches and Applications is a succinct and careful presentation of canonical constitutional law cases and important constitutional law statements from the political branches. Additionally its annual supplement includes material based on recent appellate cases applying Supreme Court constitutional doctrine. Its main features include: Relatively longer excerpts of relatively fewer cases carefully edited to preserve citations to relevant precedent. This feature allows professors to engage students about appropriate use of precedent. The book also includes note material that connects the featured cases thus providing the students with a comprehensive explanation of the law in a manageable number of pages. Thematic as well as topical organization which allows professors to explore particular jurisprudential approaches. For example much of the equal protection material is organized around the Courts use and eventual abandonment of suspect class analysis. An annual supplement that in addition to excerpting the Supreme Courts most recent constitutional law opinions also features appellate cases applying the Courts constitutional law doctrines in the form of excerpts notes or problems. This feature helps students understand how the Courts often-vague statements of constitutional law are actually applied. It also teaches the fundamental (but often-unlearned) reality that practicing lawyers need to know not just what the Supreme Court has said about a particular issue but how the relevant lower court jurisdiction has understood that statement. Moreover providing these cases as problems allows students to work through the implications of a Supreme Court decision in a concrete real-life context.