In the midst
of a professional pivot, I find myself very interested in brushing up on the
law. Such was the decision to pick up The
Supremes’ Greatest Hits, a book by Michael Trachtman that provides a
non-legalese understanding on 34 of the Supreme Court’s most important
decisions over time (as an important disclaimer, it was published in 2006, so
any decisions since then are not covered).
And while I do not have any specific needs to be a constitutional scholar
with what I am working on, it can’t hurt to re-introduce myself to some of the important
legal principles that guide the Court and make ours “a government of laws, not
men”. Those include judicial review, the
commerce clause (and how it was cleverly wrapped into a basis for the Civil
Rights Act), and the imagined yet realized right of privacy that enabled Roe v. Wade. Fun stuff.
