Seasoned Judgments: American Constitution, Rights and History

by Leonard W. Levy

Leonard Levy’s new book, a compendium of his law review articles, book chapters, and basic shorter writings on themes with which he has long been identified, is a treasure chest of sound and reasonable analysis of American constitutional history. As one reviewer of the manuscript put “There is not a clinker amongst them.” For anyone who thinks that liberal analysis has grown soft and flabby, a good dose of Levy’s book should set the record straight. Seasoned Judgments is divided into three Rights, Constitutional History, and The Marshall Court. In this progression from the general to the concrete, Levy never ignores the context as well as the content of the judicial process. Indeed, it is this linkage that separates him from nearly all other commentators and writers on the subjects covered. Whether discussing why the original Constitution lacked a Bill or Rights, or why the Fourth Amendment uses the imperative form “shall not” rather than the conditional form “ought not,” the reader enters a world of explanation rich in detail and carful scholarly elaboration. Well-known as editor in chief of the multivolumed Encyclopedia of the American Constitution , this new volume extracts some of Levy’s own contributions to that effort. As a result, one can, for the first time, gain a clear sense of the author’s own profound sense of the major issues confronting American law from the founding fathers to the present. The analysis of such still unresolved issues as flag desecration, the exclusionary rule, testimonial compulsion, taxation without representation, and the nature of the Constitution itself, will be of tremendous appeal to historians and political scientists as well as attorneys and judges.

444 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Leonard Williams Levy was the Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Professor of Humanities and Chairman of the Graduate Faculty of History at Claremont Graduate School, California. He was educated at Columbia University, where his mentor for the Ph.D. degree was Henry Steele Commager.

Levy's most honored book was his 1968 study Origins of the Fifth Amendment, focusing on the history of the privilege against self-incrimination. This book was awarded the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for History. He wrote almost forty other books.

In 1990, Levy was appointed a Distinguished Scholar in Residence; Adjunct Professor of History and Political Science at Southern Oregon State College in Ashland, Oregon.