1975/11/01 by Robert M. Cover · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics
paper · doi:10.2307/1228235
crossref issued 1975/11/01 · crossref published 1975/11/01 · crossref published-print 1975/11/01 · openalex publication_date 1975/11/01 · crossref created 2006/04/22 · crossref deposited 2018/04/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/04 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31
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