Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development

by Anthony Michael Kreis

Rot and Revival is one of the first scholarly works to comprehensively theorize and document how politics make American constitutional law and how the courts affect the path of partisan politics. Rejecting the idea that the Constitution's significance and interpretation can be divorced from contemporary political realities, Anthony Michael Kreis explains how American constitutional law reflects the ideological commitments of dominant political coalitions, the consequences of major public policy choices, and the influences of intervening social movements. Drawing on rich historical research and political science methodologies, Kreis convincingly demonstrates that the courts have never been—and cannot be—institutions lying outside the currents of national politics.

Genres: History

217 pages, Hardcover

Published June 4, 2024

Reviews

[David Auth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was incredibly dense but an interesting perspective on the history of the court, I regret not reading this before taking Jules Lobel’s ConLaw course 2 years ago shoutout my 🐐

[Mr. Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at my new blog, Mr. Book's Book Reviews.

Thank you University of California Press for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development, by Anthony Michael Kreis.

The premise of the book is the Supreme Court pretty much follows the political views of the people at the time. In that regard, it fails. If the author were to instead say that he was writing a book that argued that the Supreme Court follows the political views of the justices and, especially in the past half-century, the political views of the president who appointed them, then he’d accurately sum up the case.

In order to come up with a grade for this one, I’m going to come up with a different approach. Instead of grading the book based on the premise that the author purported, I graded it based on how I read it. And as I read this book, the author made a very good case for constitutional law reflecting merely the views of the justices sitting at the time. But, since the author attempted, at least as far as I can determine, to write a different book, I can’t reward his efforts with an A and will instead give it a B. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B equates to 3 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews.

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 28, 2024.

Go to Mr. Book’s Book Reviews homepage

[Devon Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

It boggles my mind that nobody's taken the time to fully lay out the case that Kreis did here. It's the kind of stuff we've all been talking about for years, prepared far more thoroughly than I certainly could have. And that was before this year's election, which paired with this book's argument is primed to scare the shit out of you.

I paid a premium for the hardcover version and I gotta say, it's a crispy looking son of a bitch on my shelf. What a nice piece.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got to know Kreis’ work through my time at Brookings and decided to read his latest book. I’d say this book is a good, concise survey of American constitutional legal history and political history. I wish some sections were longer and that decades of temporal gaps didn’t exist. But kudos to Kreis for mentioning Alex Bickel.

[Shannon Heaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did want a little more analysis of the thesis, but I thought it synthesized a few strands of thought that have been out there a little longer (Gerstle and the like).