The Conservative Assault on the Constitution

Chemerinsky (founding dean, Univ. of California-Irvine Sch. of Law) brings his constitutional law expertise to this analysis of recent trends in American jurisprudence, which he believes are tipping the legal scales too far right. He shows how historically accepted principles of American constitutional law, such as separation of church and state, have been diluted by a new conservative mentality that is political, not legal, in nature. He argues that the resulting new brand of political jurisprudence in constitutional law is more an offspring of the ballot box than the natural evolution of legal theory, thus allowing, for example, public displays of religious symbols that would have been banned by earlier courts. Chemerinsky also asserts that the implementation of the death penalty is fraught with unfair procedures exacerbated by an increasingly conservative federal judiciary and legislation enacted by a conservative Congress that makes it harder for individuals, even those wrongly convicted, to gain relief.