Shaping America: The Supreme Court and American Society

Shaping America offers a compelling survey of American history as viewed through the perspective of the United States Supreme Court, concentrating on how the Court’s decisions have shaped American society and how the Court in turn has been affected by prevailing political cultures, strong public attitudes, and several dominating justices.

Edward F. Mannino, a practicing trial lawyer and legal historian, analyzes the historical forces that permitted the Court to affect American society profoundly through some 150 decisions organized along chronological and thematic lines. Casting his gaze across the nation’s past, he surveys seminal cases in American constitutional history, including Marbury v. Madison, the New Orleans Slaughterhouse Cases, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Boumediene v. Bush, and D.C. v. Heller. Mannino takes special interest in cases respecting business and religion in American society and offers concise and objective perspectives on decisions affecting them. Throughout the volume Mannino illustrates the mutual influence the Court and societal forces have on each other, ably demonstrating how Court deliberations affect—and are affected by—the context in which they occur.