STEPHEN BREYER took his seat at the Supreme Court in 1994. The Bill Clinton appointee usually leans left, but in the term that finished at the end of June he found himself in the majority more often than did any of his colleagues. He is also one of America's most prolific justices. In “The Court and the World”, the third book he has written during his two decades on the bench, Mr Breyer explains how globalisation has changed the way the Supreme Court does business. With “new challenges imposed by an ever more interdependent world”, he writes, “judicial awareness can no longer stop at the border.”
The challenges come in several forms. The weightiest, which Mr Breyer outlines in a sweeping historical review, is how to “protect basic liberties in the face of security threats”. The court was once highly deferential to presidents during wartime. The justices looked the other way when, during the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up socialists and prosecuted leafleteers opposed to...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1Glz9Bt
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