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Joined 1 year, 5 months ago

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2025 Reading Goal

50% complete! Justin has read 6 of 12 books.

Leah Litman: Lawless (Hardcover, 2025, One Signal / Atria)

Good Assessment of where the Court stands in 2025

I picked up this book after Litman promoted it on her podcast, Strict Scrutiny. The writing is just as rapid and referential to pop culture as her typical speech is, which makes for a relatively engaging way to read about legal matters.

The book gives an extensive, broad overview of how the Supreme Court has wielded its power for partisan and non-democratic ends, spanning from early in our nation's history to the court as it exists under Chief Justice John Roberts (more focus given to this latest era). Litman shows that the idea of an apolitical court practising blind justic is entirely false—the court and its justices are political actors like any other official, and she details how the conservative legal movement specifically crafted a strategy around this fact to advance minority political views into the legal status-quo against popular will. She discusses how the court's decisions have affect voting …

Useful as an introduction to judicial methods of interpretation

Breyer argues against strong Textualism as practiced by the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court today. Instead, he argues for the method of judicial interpretation he used during his tenure on the court, which emphasizes pragmatism and "workability" of the constitution. Instead of strictly adhering to one framework, Breyer thinks judges ought to take into account the perspectives of many frameworks (including originalism and textualism, but also legislative intent, democratic principles, and the practical effects on the legal system/society).

The book includes many case studies which Breyer uses to point out the shortcomings of textualist analysis by showing how such a reading leads to unintuitive, counterproductive, or unworkable outcomes. I found the book useful to expand my understanding of canons of analysis and as a good anti-textualism argument.