Hughes Court

About this book

"Steven Shapin began a classic work with this sentence: "There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it."1 This book's theme might be put in similar terms. There was no Constitutional Revolution of 1937, and this is a book about it. As the book's subtitle suggests, the Hughes Court from its inception in 1930 was in large measure a Progressive court, committed in a wide range of areas to the vision of active government associated with the Progressive movement in thought and politics. The Court was not dominated by a deep formalism, though most of the justices, liberals and conservatives alike, had their moments of formalism - and not merely for strategic reasons when controlling precedent forced formalism on them. At one time or another and cumulatively a great deal of the time, all of the justices incorporated ideas about good public policy in their interpretations of the Constitution and federal statutes"--