Judges and Unjust Laws
Subtitle: Common Law Constitutionalism and the Foundations of Judicial Review
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2010
Language: eng
Number of pages: 321
ISBN-13: 9780472022953
Subjects: Constitutional law, united states; Judge-made law, great britain; Judicial review
Description: With keen insight into the common law mind, Edlin argues that there are rich resources within the law for judges to ground their opposition to morally outrageous laws, and a legal obligation on them to overturn it, consequent on the general common law obligation to develop the law. Thus, seriously unjust laws pose for common law judges a dilemma within the law, not just a moral challenge to the law, a conflict of obligations, not just a crisis of conscience. While rooted firmly in the history of common law jurisprudence, Edlin offers an entirely fresh perspective on an age-old jurisprudential conundrum.