The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution
By Barry Friedman
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 614 pp., $35)
 

The most-watched case of the Supreme Court's last term, which ended in June, invited the justices to hold unconstitutional a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The law required certain jurisdictions--largely in the Old South--to "pre-clear" any changes in their electoral systems with the Department of Justice. It was intended to prevent states with poor civil rights histories from changing their voting systems in ways that would keep blacks from voting. From the questions asked by the justices at the oral argument, the betting among the cognoscenti was that the Court's five-person conservative majority would strike down the law on the notion that things had changed and federal supervision was no longer necessary.

In a major setback for gay marriage advocates, California voters passed Proposition 8 on Tuesday. Over the next couple of days, TNR's managing editor Richard Just and TNR's legal affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen will be debating the appropriate lessons to draw from the defeat. Rosen kicks things off below. (Click here for Richard Just's response.)
 

Dear Richard,
 

By nominating Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, the Democrats have, however reluctantly or inadvertently, weaned themselves from Warrenism at last. Over the past four decades, as the excesses of the Warren Court provoked the equally ideological excesses of the Rehnquist Court, liberals and conservatives have accused each other of politicizing the judiciary.

If Bill Clinton nominates Bruce Babbitt to the Supreme Court, he will be hard-pressed to claim that the interior secretary shares his judicial philosophy. For after reviewing Babbitt's extensive writings and speeches, the White House is confident that Babbitt has virtually no opinions on constitutional issues that he has bothered to express. For most politicians, this would be unexceptional; but in Babbitt's case it is somewhat surprising.

Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom
by Ronald Dworkin
(Knopf, 273 pp., $23)