Constitutional Law Stories. Michael C. Dorf Ed.

When you are a good (frequent) customer of the online bookshop Amazon, you will be often proposed to have a look on some books related to those you bought through their services. It was not the first time I didn’t resist the temptation, and, again, I was not disappointed.

It was then for the collective book edited in 2004 by Michael C. Dorf, in the "Law Stories Series", New-York, Foundation Press [1], about the main caselaws of the US Supreme Court : Constitutional Law Stories (or here for French readers on amazon.fr)

It seems that this books has already given a lot of buzz (Google it).

Actually, its schema is simple :
 Ask to a major Professor of Law to select a panel of caselaw. Michael Dorf uses here the terms taken from an article of J.M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson, Harvard Law Review, 963 (1998) The canons of Constitutional Law.

 Then ask to 15 others Law professors to tell us the "story" of the case, almost like a journalist, or more precisely, like a novelist. The footnotes could be read by specialists, but are useless for a general understanding of the cases.

The Series began in 2003 with two books : Tax Stories and Tort Stories. No less than 9 others titles would follow : Business Tax, Civil Procedure, Contracts, Environmental Law, Immigration, Intellectual Property, Labor Law, Property, and then this Constitutional Law Stories.

This book seems to me indispensable to those who want to know the real foundations of the american Law. These caselaws are the foundamental bricks on which the Common Law built its superstructure. Every Law professionals abroad, who wants to understand an american case or even a legal article, must know these few caselaws and their "stories".