The Age of Deference

A new book by David Rudenstine, THE AGE OF DEFERENCE, looks at the extent to which judges defer to the President, and to the executive branch more generally, especially since the end of the Second World War.

Rudenstine discusses a variety of Supreme Court decisions going back to the Truman era, in which the high court ceded authority. The trauma of 9/11 seems only to have made this habit more settled.

Rudenstine thinks this a bad thing, an abdication of the courts' task to protect individual rights on the one hand and to check otherwise uncheckable power on the other.

Here's more from the Legal History Blog. http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/rudenstine-on-supreme-court-national.html

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