Do Great Cases Make Bad Law?

• Lackland H. Bloom, Jr. tests Justice Holmes' famous aphorism "Great cases like hard cases make bad law"
• Argues that the pivotal cases attracting Supreme Court attention make for poor bases upon which to construct a general law
• Analyzes in detail the history of the Supreme Court's great cases, from 1803's pivotal Marbury v. Madison to 2012's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case
• Defines and applies an analytical model for assessing the impact of each case
• Offers a detailed analysis of the Supreme Court's opinions in each great case
• Provides a detailed explanation of the context of each case
• Unveils detailed and comprehensive conclusions as to how the greatness of a case did or did not affect the presentation, deliberation, decision, and opinion in light of the law created by that case

"Great cases like hard cases make bad law" declared Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his dissenting opinion in the Northern Securities antitrust case of 1904. His maxim argues that those cases which ascend to the Supreme Court of the United States by virtue of their national importance, interest, or other extreme circumstance, make for poor bases upon which to construct a general law. Frequently, such cases catch the public's attention because they raise important legal issues, and they become landmark decisions from adoctrinal standpoint. Yet from a practical perspective, great cases could create laws poorly suited for far less publicly tantalizing but far more common situations.

In Do Great Cases Make Bad Law?, Lackland H. Bloom, Jr. tests Justice Holmes' dictum by analyzing in detail the history of the Supreme Court's great cases, from Marbury v. Madison in 1803, to National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case, in 2012. He treats each case with its own chapter, and explains why the Court found a case compelling, how the background and historical context affected the decision and its place in constitutional law and history, how academic scholarship has treated the case, and how the case integrates with and reflects off of Justice Holmes' famous statement. In doing so, Professor Bloom draws on the whole of the Supreme Court's decisional history to form an intricate scholarly understanding of the holistic significance of the Court's reasoning in American constitutional law.

Readership: Law professors, law students, lawyers, judges, historians, and political scientists