Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

"For more than two centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court has served as the most powerful court in the world. Throughout its history, however, little has been known about the inner workings of "America's Court."" "During the 1950s and 1960s, a period marked by increased Court activism and intervention in American life, public interest in the Court and its Justices also grew, and it became evident to the Court's Justices that the Court would have to begin...

"The US Constitution divides the government into three branches. The country's founders created a system of checks and balances to make sure that no branch could become too powerful. Separation of Government Powers explores this system, looking at how it works and how it continues to structure the government"--

Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution's text or to the eighteenth-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circumstances--an approach...

Argues that the supreme power of judges over political, social, and economic policy is one of the greatest threats to American democracy in the twenty-first century, revealing how judges have used their own power as a way to overturn the Constitution and the rights it guarantees American citizens.