Abortion and American Politics - Hardcover

Craig, Barbara Hinkson; O'Brien, David M.

9780934540889: Abortion and American Politics

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0934540888 ISBN 13: 9780934540889

Publisher: Chatham House Pub, 1993

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Discusses the political and legal debate over abortion in the United States

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From the Back Cover:

How the deeply divisive abortion controversy has played out on state and national levels during the past two decades provides an illustrative portrait, even if in some ways a disappointing reflection, of the operation of American government and politics. In Abortion and American Politics, Barbara H. Craig and David M. O'Brien tell the story of this explosive social issue, from the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, through the years of grass-roots activism and public debate that led to the de-turning 1989 decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and to the no less controversial 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. Against the background of ambiguities of public opinion polls, the authors trace the strategic maneuvering of interest groups in bringing litigation and in pushing for legislation and executive action. And they underscore the prospects for further changes in the national debate over abortion with the Clinton administration's policies and its judicial appointees. Without attempting to resolve the abortion controversy or to advocate one or another position, Craig and O'Brien present a comprehensive analysis of the complex interaction of interest groups, the states, the courts, Congress, and the president and the executive branch. As a case study of institutional conflict over public policy, Abortion and American Politics demonstrates the enduring vitality of the Founders' vision of a system of constitutional politics that allows for incremental change as a means to ensure stability in the face of unyielding social controversy.

About the Author:

David M. O'Brien is the Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor at the University of Virginia. Prior to teaching at the University of Virginia, he taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Puget Sound, where he was chairman of the Department of Politics. He served as a research associate in the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice and, in 1982-1983, as a judicial fellow at the Supreme Court. He also has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York (1981-1982); has been a Fulbright lecturer in constitutional studies at Oxford University, England (1987-1988); has been a Fulbright researcher in Japan (1993-1994); has held the Fulbright Chair for Senior Scholars at the University of Bologna in Italy (1999); and was a visiting professor at Florida International University (2002) and at the Institut d'Etudes Politique, Universite Lumiere-Lyon II in Lyon, France (2006). Among his many books are Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, eleventh edition (2017), which won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award; Constitutional Law and Politics: Struggles for Power and Governmental Accountability and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, tenth edition, two volumes (2017); Animal Sacrifice and Religious Freedom: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (2004); To Dream of Dreams: Religious Freedom and Constitutional Politics in Postwar Japan (1996); Supreme Court Watch, published annually since 1991; Congress Shall Make No Law: The First Amendment, Unprotected Expression, and the U.S. Supreme Court (2010); Judicial Roulette (1988); What Process Is Due? Courts and Science Policy Disputes (1987); The Public's Right to Know: The First Amendment and the Supreme Court (1981); and Privacy, Law, and Public Policy (1979). He has coauthored The Judicial Process: Law, Court and Judicial Politics (2015), Courts and Judicial Policymaking (2008) Government by the People (22nd ed. 2008), and Abortion and American Politics (1993); edited or coedited several books, including The Lanahan Readings on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, third edition (2010) and Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy: Critical Perspectives from Around the World (2001); and contributed more than 100 articles and chapters in professional journals and books.

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