This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

This book assesses the role of the federal judiciary in immigration and the institutional evolution of the Supreme Court and the US Courts of Appeals. Neither court has played a static role across time. By the turn of the century, a division of labor had developed between the two courts whereby the Courts of Appeals retained their original function as error-correction courts, while the Supreme Court was reserved for the most important policy and political questions. Law explores the consequences of this division for immigrant litigants, who are more likely to prevail in the Courts of Appeals because of advantageous institutional incentives that increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome. As this book proves, it is inaccurate to speak of an undifferentiated institution called 'the federal courts' or 'the courts', for such characterizations elide important differences in mission and function of the two highest courts in the federal judicial hierarchy.

"A stunning work of history."—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of No Ordinary Time and Team of Rivals Beginning in 1935, the Supreme Court's conservative majority left much of FDR's agenda in ruins. The pillars of the New Deal fell in short succession. It was not just the New Deal but democracy itself that stood on trial. In February 1937, Roosevelt struck back with an audacious plan to expand the Court to fifteen justices—and to "pack" the new seats with liberals who shared his belief in a "living" Constitution.

During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century a growing number of ordinary citizens had the feeling that all was not as it should be. Men who were making money made prodigious amounts, but this new wealth somehow passed over the heads of the common people. As this new breed of journalists began to examine their subjects with scrutiny, they soon discovered that those individuals were essentially “simple men of extraordinary boldness.” And it was easy to understand how they were able to accomplish their sinister purposes: “at first abruptly and bluntly, by asking and giving no quarter, and later with the same old determination and ruthlessness but with educated satellites who were glad to explain and idealize their behavior.”[i] “Nothing is lost save honor,” said one infamous buccaneer, and that was an attitude that governed the amoral principles and extralegal actions of many audacious scoundrels. Relying on secondary sources, magazine and newspaper articles, and personal accounts from those involved, this volume captures some of the sensational true stories that took place in the western United States during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The theme that runs through each of the stories is the general contempt for the law that seemed to pervade the culture at the time and the consuming desire to acquire wealth at any cost—what Geoffrey C. Ward has called “the disposition to be rich.” End Notes Introduction [i]Louis Filler, Crusaders for American Liberalism (Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1964), 14.

Headquartered in St. Louis and serving primarily Midwestern states, the Eighth Circuit Court has ruled on cases that touch some of the most significant issues in American history, including Native American rights, school segregation, farm bankruptcies, abortion, the environment, pornography, the “war on drugs,” and the first successful class-action sexual-harassment lawsuit. In Establishing Justice in Middle America, Jeffrey Brandon Morris covers its history, from its founding in 1866 through the present day. Morris also provides a panoramic view, discussing how the court has changed over time, the judges who have served on the court, and all of the court’s major cases. This work is one of the first histories of a court in the mostly regional tier of federal courts that are, judicially speaking, nearest to the Supreme Court. Establishing Justice in Middle America reveals how, in many ways, the history of a regional court is a history of the nation itself. Jeffrey Brandon Morris is professor of law at Touro Law Center in Long Island, New York. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including histories of four federal courts, and is editor of the Encyclopedia of American History. Published for the Historical Society of the United States Courts in the Eighth Circuit.