Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: White Bosses
Part 1. Judicial Authority in Principle
1.The Constitutional Question
2. Madison's Institutional Answer
3. Lincoln's Egalitarian Answer
Part 2. Judicial Supremacy in Practice
4. The Marshall Court Conflicts
5. The Black Race within Our Bosom, the Red on Our Borders
6. The Civil War Rules
7. Reconstructing the Constitution
Part 3. Equal Authority in Principle and Practice
8. An Egalitarian Response: Brown v. Board of Education
9. Atavistic Reaction: The Nixon Tapes, the Death Penalty, and Abortion
10. A Constitutional Resolution
Notes
Works Cited
Acknowledgments
Index

In a remarkably innovative reconstruction of constitutional history, Robert Burt traces the controversy over judicial supremacy back to the founding fathers. Also drawing extensively on Lincoln’s conception of political equality, Burt argues convincingly that judicial supremacy and majority rule are both inconsistent with the egalitarian democratic ideal. The first fully articulated presentation of the Constitution as a communally interpreted document in which the Supreme Court plays an important but not predominant role, The Constitution in Conflict has dramatic implications for both the theory and the practice of constitutional law. ( Source: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674165373)