"Highly illuminating... for anyone interested in the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the American democracy, lawyer and layperson alike." -- The Los Angeles Review of Books

In his major work, acclaimed historian and judicial authority Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court's long history. Constitutional dialogue is one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. The Supreme Court has interpreted the meaning of the Constitution, acknowledged that the Court's majority opinions have not always been right, and initiated a critical discourse about what a particular decision should mean before fashioning subsequent decisions -- largely through the power of dissent.

Urofsky shows how the practice grew slowly but steadily, beginning with the infamous and now overturned case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) during which Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion upheld slavery and ending with the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Dissent on the court and off, Urofsky argues in this major work, has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so.

• We started tracking this book on October 27, 2015.
• This book was $18.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 87 times in the past 3,386 days.
• The current price of this book is $7.99 last checked 3 hours ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $4.99.
• The lowest price to date was $4.99 last reached on October 10, 2024.
• This book has been $4.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $18.99 last reached on October 27, 2015.
• This book has been $18.99 one time since we started tracking it.

• Politics & Social Sciences

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 541 Pages
• File Size: 44,105 KB