Chapter 2 presents the federal response to violence against women. We begin the chapter with a brief overview of the history of domestic violence in the United States. We then analyze the response of Congress to the domestic violence epidemic as compared to the Supreme Court’s response. This detailed presentation reveals the gaps that federal laws havr created by leaving states the option to enforce them and relegating nearly all of the enforcement of domestic violence law to local authorities. This chapter underscores the role and limi, of federal policy in remedying the inequities among women in their personal protection from domestic violence. The lack of a cohesive federal response contributes to all four levels of gender inequality in domestic violence policy.

After formally adopting their competition laws, India and Pakistan were faced with the task of implementing them. However, although both countries established their national competition authorities, the CCI and the CCP, almost immediately after adopting their respective legislations, the enforcement of these legislations has not been without complications. This chapter compares the structures, mandates, and compositions of these authorities and their decision-making strategies, and provides a comparative overview of implementation of competition laws in the two countries by reference indicators derived from the orders issued by the CCI and CCP in respect of anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominance. The chapter also links the performance of the CCI and CCP and their interactions with their countries’ pre-existing legal systems to the mechanisms and institutions employed by the countries in the adoption stage and the compatibility and legitimacy generated through them.

A series of important lawsuits in the 1820s represented an increasingly stark division in American thinking about the role and authority of the Supreme Court in: Hunter v. Martin, Devise of Fairfax (1814), Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Cohens v. Virginia (1821). That debate over federalism reflected fundamentally different views of the foundation and formation of the Constitution. For John Marshall and other nationally minded Americans, the Constitution had been established as the act of one national people, forming a national government with considerable powers. For states’ rights advocates, the Constitution was a compact of sovereign states, leaving state sovereignty largely intact except for limited and express grants of powers to the national government. Those competing views shaped how each side regarded the role and authority of the Supreme Court, and rhetoric became more extreme as nationalists feared disunion and states’ rights advocates feared the disintegration of state authority, including over slavery.

Presidents Jefferson and Madison’s Republican-backed policies prompted new waves of state interposition. Federalist-dominated state legislatures in New England passed interposition resolutions that protested: Jefferson’s Embargo Acts (1807–1809); United States v. Peters (1809) emphasizing the Supreme Court’s finality over constitutionality; the recharter of the Bank of the United States; and Madison’s efforts to mobilize state militias before the War of 1812. After the controversy over the Alien and Sedition Acts and Jefferson’s election in 1800, Americans might have expected Republicans to advocate strict construction of national powers under the Constitution while Federalists would urge broader powers. However, defenses of states’ rights never belonged exclusively to one political viewpoint or party. Americans debated whether sounding the alarm resolutions and state interposition were legitimate state actions – and some asked if and when they would be justified in more forcefully resisting federal law, notably during the Hartford Convention in 1814 that called for constitutional amendments to reduce the power of Southern states and the repeal of the Three-Fifths Clause.

Two dominant constitutional issues in the 1790s illustrate the fluid nature of constitutional meaning in the early republic. One issue was whether the Constitution permitted individuals to sue states in federal court. The Supreme Court’s decision in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) generated widespread state interposition to resist the Court’s broad interpretation of a constitutional clause and resulted in the Eleventh Amendment. A second constitutional issue generating interposition in 1796 was whether President Washington had exceeded his authority in negotiating the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Federalists argued that the Constitution’s text clearly provided presidential authority while Republicans wanted Congress to speak for the sovereign people and have a vital role in assessing a treaty’s constitutionality. Both sides considered it important to understand the intent of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution and to employ that history in interpreting the document. Yet, this process of constitutional interpretation allowed inferences from the Constitution’s text, reliance on memory, and even thoughts about the framers’ intentions.

Both sides in the battle over postwar German policy shared the same ultimate objective: to reduce the likelihood of another world war. The question was how to achieve it. Both sides could make compelling cases. In Treasury Secretary Morgenthau’s view, future peace required the dismantling of Germany’s capacity to wage war. It was that simple. Remove their means of manufacturing the weapons of modern war, and the Germans could not threaten the peace. By contrast, War Secretary Stimson believed that peace required prosperity, and by forcing Germany to subsist at artificially low living standards, the Allies would breed resentments that would undermine stability. Morgenthau’s view was a negative conception of world order: disintegrate Germany from the calculus of great power politics, and the result would equal peace. Stimson’s view was more positive: reintegrate Germany into European recovery, and the Germans would become stakeholders in an interdependent world. Roosevelt’s advisors split down this divide. Their position depended in large part on what each believed about the German people, themselves.

The US Supreme Court had the power to overturn FDR’s internment order, but two main factors prevented it. Justice Felix Frankfurter worked hard to persuade his colleagues to keep the policy in place. Simultaneously, Frankfurter’s close friend, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, the most prominent official advocating internment, engaged in a cover-up. He collaborated with officials inside the War Department to suppress information and falsify records crucial to the Hirabayashi case. If the Court had known that the evidence of Japanese-American sabotage had been doctored, the Court might have struck the President’s order down. Chapter 4 unpacks the cover-up and shows how a small group of officials actively undermined the majority’s will.

The Supreme Court provides cover for private actors who anonymously call 911 to report suspicious Black people to the police, and for the police who arrive with guns blazing.

One of the central themes of Democracy in America is the dawning tide of democratic equality. In Tocqueville’s view, this equality – understood as uniformity – represents the future of modern democratic society. Rogers M. Smith argues in this chapter that, even though Tocqueville’s assessment of America as a world of democratic equality may be unreliable, his reckoning with these issues nonetheless proves instructive for how we confront challenges of diversity and inequality. Tocqueville’s worries concerned excessive equality and uniformity, but today’s dilemmas increasingly involve inequality and differential treatment. Rather than treating everyone equally, in what Smith calls a “post-Tocquevillean America,” we confront the challenge of trying to secure diversity and equity by differential treatment of some groups. Smith argues that we ought to be prepared to offer special accommodations and differential treatment for groups so long as these do not substantially harm the civil rights of others and are consistent with the broader ends of substantive equality. Although Tocqueville’s vision of the challenges of democracy may diverge from our own, his thoughts remain illuminating of contemporary challenges of diversity and inequality.

This chapter is structured into three main sections. Section 6.2 provides an overview of pharmaceutical patent law in India, while Section 6.3 examines the jurisprudence on the right to health in India. Section 6.4 examines how Indian courts have incorporated a model of human rights into their decisions in cases involving patent rights on pharmaceutical products. The chapter concludes with the view that the combined effect of the liberal interpretative approach adopted with regard to the constitutional right to life and the incorporation of a model of human rights into their decisions in patent cases has enabled Indian courts to safeguard and protect the enjoyment of the human right to health in India while adjudicating cases involving pharmaceutical patent rights.

Reconstruction ended in 1876 as railroads, mining, and agriculture grew. Robber Barons emerged as the leaders of these activities became rich. The Supreme Court in the 1880s eliminated the constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction to help Blacks by either rejecting them or reinterpreting them. Jim Crow laws were passed in many Southern states after 1896 depriving Blacks of the vote and leading to a decline in Black education. I describe the movie, Birth of a Nation, to show the attitude of white people at the time of World War I toward Blacks and Reconstruction. Those views have been shown since to be totally false.

This chapter argues that a pro-democracy First Amendment should also be a pro-union First Amendment. It is an article of faith that a significant purpose of the First Amendment is to enable and improve democracy, by helping Americans access the information they need for democratic deliberation and participation. Further, a considerable body of research shows that labor unions make American democracy stronger and more representative. But despite this, the Supreme Court has treated unions’ political advocacy in cases involving union agency fees with suspicion and disdain. After describing this unfortunate situation – one that is likely to get worse under the current Supreme Court – the chapter closes on a note of optimism, looking ahead to a time when scholars and advocates can realistically begin the work of rebuilding a First Amendment that recognizes labor unions as democracy-enhancing institutions.

In An NHS Trust v. Y, the UK Supreme Court ruled that it is not mandatory to seek judicial approval for decisions to withdraw feeding tubes (clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH)) from patients in vegetative or minimally conscious states. The courts remain available where a patient's best interests are in dispute (e.g. between family and clinicians) or where a decision is 'finely balanced’. We welcomed this decision. Our research at the Coma and Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre over the previous decade had shown how mandatory court hearings work against these patients’ best interests ‒ in particular by creating situations where patients are treated by default (sometimes for decades) without consideration of whether ongoing CANH is in their best interests. This chapter highlights the significance of the Supreme Court judgement, tells the story of the movement for law reform that culminated in that judgement, and explores the role played by different evidence, arguments, case law, professional bodies, and networks in creating change. We explain how, as academics, advocates and activists, we contributed to the collective effort that achieved this reform.