The History of the Supreme Court of the United States

Owen M. Fiss is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a LLB from Harvard University. Prior to teaching, he clerked for Thurgood Marshall, then a judge on the Second Circuit, and later for William J. Brennan, a justice of the Supreme Court. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1968 to 1974 and has taught at Yale Law School since 1974 to the present. Professor Fiss's most recent books include: Liberalism Divided (1996); The Irony of Free Speech (1996); A Way Out: America's Ghetto and the Legacy of Racism (2003); and The Law as it Could Be (2003).

Part I. The Legacy of Negative Examples: 1. Legitimacy and history; 2. The identity of the institution; Part II. Class Conflict and the Supreme Court: 3. Debs and the maintenance of public order; 4. Pollock - the redistributive function denied; Part III. The Response to Progressivism: 5. The Antitrust campaign; 6. Labor legislation and the theory of Lochner; 7. Rate regulation: the assault on Munn v. Illinois; Part IV. The Concept of the Nation: 8. The American empire?; 9. Federalism and liberty; Part V. Liberty Dishonored: 10. The Chinese cases: citizenship and the claims of procedure; 11. The early free speech cases; 12. Plessy, alas; 13. The end of a tradition?