Quand un juge constitutionnel écrit un livre de droit constitutionnel...

Le dernier numéro du Yale Law Journal (volume 115, n°7, mai 2006) vient de sortir (on peut s’abonner aux alertes des sorties ici). Entre autres remarquables articles, on y apprend entre autres que le juge de la Cour Suprême US Stephen Breyer vient de commettre un livre de droit constitutionnel (Active Liberty, 2005), ce qui lui vaut pas moins de trois analyses d’ouvrage dans cette livraison du YLJ, dont celle de Richard Posner, excusez du peu, avec laquelle le pauvre juge est habillé pour l’hiver : http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/1...

J’ai rarement vu un article juridique aussi méchant.

Reviews

The Pragmatic Passion of Stephen Breyer
Paul Gewirtz
Now in his twelfth year as a Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Breyer has written an important book, Active Liberty, which crystallizes a fundamental set of beliefs about the American Constitution and his role as a Justice. Taking Active Liberty as the entry point, this piece places Breyer’s book in the wider context of his judicial opinions and activities as a Justice - and, as such, seeks to provide a preliminary sketch of Breyer’s distinctive place in American law today.MORE

Justice Breyer Throws Down the Gauntlet
Richard A. Posner
A Supreme Court Justice writing a book about constitutional law is like a dog walking on his hind legs : The wonder is not that it is done well but that it is done at all. The dog’s walking is inhibited by anatomical limitations, the Justice’s writing by political ones. Supreme Court Justices are powerful political figures ; they cannot write with the freedom and candor of more obscure people.MORE

Justice Breyer
Cass R. Sunstein
As a law professor at Harvard Law School, Stephen Breyer specialized in administrative law. His important work in that field was marked above all by its unmistakably pragmatic foundations. In an influential book, Breyer emphasized that regulatory problems were "mismatched" to regulatory tools ; he urged that an understanding of the particular problem that justified regulation would help in the selection of the right tool.MORE