Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process

By Robert M. Cover

Book Overview

What should a judge do when he must hand down a ruling based on a law that he considers unjust or oppressive? This question is examined through a series of problems concerning unjust law that arose with respect to slavery in nineteenth-century America.
"Cover's book is splendid in many ways. His legal history and legal philosophy are both first class. . . . This is, for a change, an interdisciplinary work that is a credit to both disciplines."--Ronald Dworkin, Times Literary Supplement
"Scholars should be grateful to Cover for his often brilliant illumination of tensions created in judges by changing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jurisprudential attitudes and legal standards. . . An exciting adventure in interdisciplinary history."--Harold M. Hyman, American Historical Review
"A most articulate, sophisticated, and learned defense of legal formalism. . . Deserves and needs to be widely read."--Don Roper, Journal of American History
"An excellent illustration of the way in which a burning moral issue relates to the American judicial process. The book thus has both historical value and a very immediate importance."--Edwards A. Stettner, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
"A really fine book, an important contribution to law and to history."--Louis H. Pollak

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300032528
• ISBN13: 9780300032529
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The Deeper Question

I studied this book in law school. I think the central question of this book is a little deeper than the way the previous reviewer phrased it. The book explores the conflict that occurs when a judge perceives that the law applying to a case before him is not a just one and will result in injustice if applied in the current case. Does the judge simply apply the law, or find some way around it to allow for a just result? This is an interesting question today, given the debate between "strict construction" of the Constitution and Holmes' popular notion that the Constitution is a "living document" whose interpretation must evolve with the times. The chief example used in this book is the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which a slave who had lived for many years on free soil, sued for his freedom, but was turned down by the Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds -- although presumably the judges knew that this was not a just result.

One of my favorite book

Justice Accused addresses why antebellum judges who opposed slavery nonetheless felt powerless to do any thing but enforce it.