Monday, November 24, 2008

What is Robert Tsai reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Robert Tsai, law professor and author of the newly released Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture.

One part of his entry:
I recently re-read Robert H. Jackson's The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy, written while he was U.S. Attorney General and published the same year he was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In it, Jackson [pictured left] looks back on the transformative New Deal years as part of a constant struggle in American politics between judicial supremacy and popular government. Although he is obviously a partisan--someone who participated actively in the making of history and law during these formative years and would continue to do so--he tried to put events in historical context. The book is highly accessible. It demonstrates that the issues intellectuals struggled with during the war years are much the same as the ones we struggle with now: how to reconcile the rule of law with rule by the majority; and how to reform government to render it more accountable to the needs of average Americans.[read on]
Robert L. Tsai is associate professor of law at American University, Washington College of Law. Learn more about Robert Tsai's teaching and research at his personal website.

His new book is Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture.

Among the praise for the book:
“Just when I thought that there was nothing new to say about the First Amendment, Robert Tsai comes along and writes a book which encourages me to think again.”
—Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

"Tsai's exciting work on the interplay between the Supreme Court and the executive branch in the nineteen forties sheds new light on the origins of modern constitutional law. And his new account of the relationship between language and power in political discourse is sure to be controversial and should be widely read."
—H. Jefferson Powell, Duke Law School
Read an excerpt from Eloquence and Reason, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Visit the Eloquence and Reason blog.

Writers Read: Robert Tsai.

--Marshal Zeringue