Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process

ISBN: 0300032528

Author: Cover, Robert M.

Condition: Used

What should a judge do when he must hand down a ruling based on a law that he considers unjust or oppressive? This question is examined through a series of problems concerning unjust law that arose with respect to slavery in nineteenth-century America.Covers book is splendid in many ways. His legal history and legal philosophy are both first class. . . . This is, for a change, an interdisciplinary work that is a credit to both disciplines.-Ronald Dworkin, Times Literary SupplementScholars should be grateful to Cover for his often brilliant illumination of tensions created in judges by changing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jurisprudential attitudes and legal standards. . . An exciting adventure in interdisciplinary history.-Harold M. Hyman, American Historical ReviewA most articulate, sophisticated, and learned defense of legal formalism. . . Deserves and needs to be widely read.-Don Roper, Journal of American HistoryAn excellent illustration of the way in which a burning moral issue relates to the American judicial process. The book thus has both historical value and a very immediate importance.-Edwards A. Stettner, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceA really fine book, an important contribution to law and to history.-Louis H. Pollak