Legal scholarship is in a state of crisis, argues Laura Kalman in this history of the most prestigious field in law studies, constitutional theory. Since the New Deal, Kalman says, most law scholars have identified themselves as liberals who believe in the power of the Supreme Court to effect progressive social change. In recent years, however, new political and interdisciplinary perspectives have undermined the tenets of legal liberalism, and liberal...

"The Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s was the most liberal in American history. Yet within a few short years, new appointments redirected the Court in a more conservative direction, a trend that continued for decades. However, even after Warren retired and the makeup of the court changed, his Court cast a shadow that extends to our own era. In The Long Reach of the Sixties, Laura Kalman focuses on the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Presidents...