Anthony Amsterdam - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Anthony Amsterdam
Hofstra Law Review, 2004
A convocation to inaugurate a new distinguished professorship of constitutional law naturally inv... more A convocation to inaugurate a new distinguished professorship of constitutional law naturally invites reflections on the question whether the current state of United States constitutional law makes it worth professing. Of course, such an occasion also stacks the deck against a negative answer. It would be ingratitude of the worst sort for me to accept the law school's hospitality, eat the cheese and drink the wine promised at the end of our speech-making, and devote my speech to declaring that the distinction conferred upon my esteemed colleague and good friend, Eric Freedman, is a wrongheaded venture from the get-go. So I will not take it that far. But I will assert that a significant part of constitutional law as it is doctrinally understood and taught in law schools today is as dead as Davie Crockett's beaver hat and that it is amazing that we go on understanding it and teaching it and writing about it in the way we do. I refer to the Bill of Rights and the guarantees of due process and equal protection that are supposed to safeguard the rights of criminal defendants and of persons suspected of doing or plotting violent criminal misdeeds.
Journal of Legal Education, 1984
... in students ways of thinking within and about the role of lawyersmethods of critical analysi... more ... in students ways of thinking within and about the role of lawyersmethods of critical analysis, planning, and ... We had learned case reading and doctrinal analysis sub nom ... The substantive law we learned in these courses was interesting, but it was nothing that we could not have ...
Columbia Law Review, 1963
The American Journal of Legal History, Oct 1, 2000
ABSTRACT In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawye... more ABSTRACT In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty. Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify one's claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring one's language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts' decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying culture's storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains. But a culture's stock of stories is not changeless. Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Court's race-discrimination decisions during the past century. A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing law's commitment to a humane justice. Table of Contents: 1. Invitation to a Journey 2. On Categories 3. Categorizing at the Supreme Court Missouri v. Jenkins and Michael H. v. Gerald D. 4. On Narrative 5. Narratives at Court Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Freeman v. Pitts 6. On Rhetorics 7. The Rhetorics of Death McCleskey v. Kemp 8. On the Dialectic of Culture 9. Race, the Court, and America's Dialectic From Plessy through Brown to Pitts and Jenkins 10. Reflections on a Voyage Appendix: Analysis of Nouns and Verbs in the Prigg, Pitts, and Brown Opinions Notes Table of Cases Index Reviews of this book: Amsterdam, a distinguished Supreme Court litigator, wanted to do more than share the fruits of his practical experience. He also wanted to...get students to think about thinking like a lawyer...To decode what he calls "law-think," he enlisted the aid of the venerable cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner...[and] the collaboration has resulted in [this] unusual book. --James Ryerson, Lingua Franca Reviews of this book: It is hard to imagine a better time for the publication of Minding the Law , a brilliant dissection of the court's work by two eminent scholars, law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam and cultural anthropologist Jerome Bruner...Issue by issue, case by case, Amsterdam and Bruner make mincemeat of the court's handling of the most important constitutional issue of the modern era: how to eradicate the American legacy of race discrimination, especially against blacks. --Edward Lazarus, Los Angeles Times Book Review Reviews of this book: This book is a gem...[Its thesis] is easily stated but remarkably unrecognized among a shockingly large number of lawyers and law professors: law is a storytelling enterprise thoroughly entrenched in culture....Whereas critical legal theorists have talked among themselves for the past two decades, Amsterdam and Bruner seek to engage all of us in a dialogue. For that, they should be applauded. --Daniel R. Williams, New York Law Journal Reviews of this book: In Minding the Law , Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner show us how the Supreme Court creates the magic of inevitability. They are angry at what they see. Their book is premised on the conviction that many of the choices made in Supreme Court opinions 'lack any justification in the text'...Their method is to analyze the text of opinions and to show how the conclusions reached do not always follow from the logic of the argument. They also show how the Court casts its rhetoric like a spell, mesmerizing its audience, and making the highly contingent shine with the light of inevitability. --Mitchell Goodman, News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) Reviews of this book: What do controversial Supreme Court decisions and classic age-old tales of adultery, villainy, and combat have in common? Everything--at least in the eyes of [Amsterdam and Bruner]. In this substantial study, which is equal parts dense and entertaining, the authors use theoretical discussions of literary technique and myths to expose what they see as the secret intentions of Supreme Court opinions...Studying how lawyers and judges employ the various literary devices at their disposal and noting the similarities between legal thinking and classic tactics of storytelling and persuasion, they believe, can have 'astonishing consciousness-retrieving…
Cultural Psychology of Education, 2015
Criminal Justice Ethics, 1987
... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law an... more ... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law and can be vindicat-ed or betrayed by the decisions of any court, they have been sold down the river by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States less than a year old. ...
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1965
FEDERAL REIOVAL AND TABEAS CORPUS JUIRISDICTION TO ABORT STATE COURT TRIAL * ANTHONY G. AMSTERDAM... more FEDERAL REIOVAL AND TABEAS CORPUS JUIRISDICTION TO ABORT STATE COURT TRIAL * ANTHONY G. AMSTERDAM t 'MISS. CoNsT. art. 12, §244 (challenged and sustained in United States v.
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1964
... shoots that grow in the "untidy area" (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, dis... more ... shoots that grow in the "untidy area" (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, dissenting, in Sunal v. Large ... It can hardly be supposed that Jordan, rendered without opinion and without dissent, was ... 157 (1953);ALI STUDY OF THE DIVISION OF JURISDIcTION BETWEEN STATE AND FEDERAL ...
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1958
Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the U... more Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the United States. The familiar episodes have grown out of grand issues which invited dramatic clashes of mighty forces. When these have occurred the judiciary has not always stood ...
Stanford Law Review, 1975
... The principal legal control upon the duration of the precourt phase of a criminal prosecution... more ... The principal legal control upon the duration of the precourt phase of a criminal prosecution is ... arraignment statutes or rules in most jurisdictions require that he be taken before a magistrate ... trigger a period limited by law for the conduct of other subsequent proceedings, such as ...
Amici are teachers in New York law schools who have studied the operation of the death penalty fo... more Amici are teachers in New York law schools who have studied the operation of the death penalty for the purpose of teaching the subject, writing about it in scholarly journals, or representing persons accused or convicted of capital crimes. Most of us have worked in ...
Criminal Justice Ethics, 1988
... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law an... more ... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law and can be vindicat-ed or betrayed by the decisions of any court, they have been sold down the river by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States less than a year old. ...
Clev. St. L. Rev., 1992
TEACHING ABOUT JUSTICE THROUGH CREATIVE STRATEGIES Anthony G. Amsterdam1 Let me start with the ca... more TEACHING ABOUT JUSTICE THROUGH CREATIVE STRATEGIES Anthony G. Amsterdam1 Let me start with the case law on my subject. ... For he tells us there that when Anu, the Lord of the Heavens, and Enlil, the Lord of the Earth, gave the rule of all mankind to Marduk, when ...
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1958
Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the U... more Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the United States. The familiar episodes have grown out of grand issues which invited dramatic clashes of mighty forces. When these have occurred the judiciary has not always stood ...
Hofstra Law Review, 2004
A convocation to inaugurate a new distinguished professorship of constitutional law naturally inv... more A convocation to inaugurate a new distinguished professorship of constitutional law naturally invites reflections on the question whether the current state of United States constitutional law makes it worth professing. Of course, such an occasion also stacks the deck against a negative answer. It would be ingratitude of the worst sort for me to accept the law school's hospitality, eat the cheese and drink the wine promised at the end of our speech-making, and devote my speech to declaring that the distinction conferred upon my esteemed colleague and good friend, Eric Freedman, is a wrongheaded venture from the get-go. So I will not take it that far. But I will assert that a significant part of constitutional law as it is doctrinally understood and taught in law schools today is as dead as Davie Crockett's beaver hat and that it is amazing that we go on understanding it and teaching it and writing about it in the way we do. I refer to the Bill of Rights and the guarantees of due process and equal protection that are supposed to safeguard the rights of criminal defendants and of persons suspected of doing or plotting violent criminal misdeeds.
Journal of Legal Education, 1984
... in students ways of thinking within and about the role of lawyersmethods of critical analysi... more ... in students ways of thinking within and about the role of lawyersmethods of critical analysis, planning, and ... We had learned case reading and doctrinal analysis sub nom ... The substantive law we learned in these courses was interesting, but it was nothing that we could not have ...
Columbia Law Review, 1963
The American Journal of Legal History, Oct 1, 2000
ABSTRACT In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawye... more ABSTRACT In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty. Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify one's claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring one's language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts' decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying culture's storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains. But a culture's stock of stories is not changeless. Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Court's race-discrimination decisions during the past century. A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing law's commitment to a humane justice. Table of Contents: 1. Invitation to a Journey 2. On Categories 3. Categorizing at the Supreme Court Missouri v. Jenkins and Michael H. v. Gerald D. 4. On Narrative 5. Narratives at Court Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Freeman v. Pitts 6. On Rhetorics 7. The Rhetorics of Death McCleskey v. Kemp 8. On the Dialectic of Culture 9. Race, the Court, and America's Dialectic From Plessy through Brown to Pitts and Jenkins 10. Reflections on a Voyage Appendix: Analysis of Nouns and Verbs in the Prigg, Pitts, and Brown Opinions Notes Table of Cases Index Reviews of this book: Amsterdam, a distinguished Supreme Court litigator, wanted to do more than share the fruits of his practical experience. He also wanted to...get students to think about thinking like a lawyer...To decode what he calls "law-think," he enlisted the aid of the venerable cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner...[and] the collaboration has resulted in [this] unusual book. --James Ryerson, Lingua Franca Reviews of this book: It is hard to imagine a better time for the publication of Minding the Law , a brilliant dissection of the court's work by two eminent scholars, law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam and cultural anthropologist Jerome Bruner...Issue by issue, case by case, Amsterdam and Bruner make mincemeat of the court's handling of the most important constitutional issue of the modern era: how to eradicate the American legacy of race discrimination, especially against blacks. --Edward Lazarus, Los Angeles Times Book Review Reviews of this book: This book is a gem...[Its thesis] is easily stated but remarkably unrecognized among a shockingly large number of lawyers and law professors: law is a storytelling enterprise thoroughly entrenched in culture....Whereas critical legal theorists have talked among themselves for the past two decades, Amsterdam and Bruner seek to engage all of us in a dialogue. For that, they should be applauded. --Daniel R. Williams, New York Law Journal Reviews of this book: In Minding the Law , Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner show us how the Supreme Court creates the magic of inevitability. They are angry at what they see. Their book is premised on the conviction that many of the choices made in Supreme Court opinions 'lack any justification in the text'...Their method is to analyze the text of opinions and to show how the conclusions reached do not always follow from the logic of the argument. They also show how the Court casts its rhetoric like a spell, mesmerizing its audience, and making the highly contingent shine with the light of inevitability. --Mitchell Goodman, News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) Reviews of this book: What do controversial Supreme Court decisions and classic age-old tales of adultery, villainy, and combat have in common? Everything--at least in the eyes of [Amsterdam and Bruner]. In this substantial study, which is equal parts dense and entertaining, the authors use theoretical discussions of literary technique and myths to expose what they see as the secret intentions of Supreme Court opinions...Studying how lawyers and judges employ the various literary devices at their disposal and noting the similarities between legal thinking and classic tactics of storytelling and persuasion, they believe, can have 'astonishing consciousness-retrieving…
Cultural Psychology of Education, 2015
Criminal Justice Ethics, 1987
... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law an... more ... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law and can be vindicat-ed or betrayed by the decisions of any court, they have been sold down the river by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States less than a year old. ...
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1965
FEDERAL REIOVAL AND TABEAS CORPUS JUIRISDICTION TO ABORT STATE COURT TRIAL * ANTHONY G. AMSTERDAM... more FEDERAL REIOVAL AND TABEAS CORPUS JUIRISDICTION TO ABORT STATE COURT TRIAL * ANTHONY G. AMSTERDAM t 'MISS. CoNsT. art. 12, §244 (challenged and sustained in United States v.
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1964
... shoots that grow in the "untidy area" (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, dis... more ... shoots that grow in the "untidy area" (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, dissenting, in Sunal v. Large ... It can hardly be supposed that Jordan, rendered without opinion and without dissent, was ... 157 (1953);ALI STUDY OF THE DIVISION OF JURISDIcTION BETWEEN STATE AND FEDERAL ...
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1958
Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the U... more Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the United States. The familiar episodes have grown out of grand issues which invited dramatic clashes of mighty forces. When these have occurred the judiciary has not always stood ...
Stanford Law Review, 1975
... The principal legal control upon the duration of the precourt phase of a criminal prosecution... more ... The principal legal control upon the duration of the precourt phase of a criminal prosecution is ... arraignment statutes or rules in most jurisdictions require that he be taken before a magistrate ... trigger a period limited by law for the conduct of other subsequent proceedings, such as ...
Amici are teachers in New York law schools who have studied the operation of the death penalty fo... more Amici are teachers in New York law schools who have studied the operation of the death penalty for the purpose of teaching the subject, writing about it in scholarly journals, or representing persons accused or convicted of capital crimes. Most of us have worked in ...
Criminal Justice Ethics, 1988
... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law an... more ... Insofar as the basic principles that give value to our lives are in the keeping of the law and can be vindicat-ed or betrayed by the decisions of any court, they have been sold down the river by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States less than a year old. ...
Clev. St. L. Rev., 1992
TEACHING ABOUT JUSTICE THROUGH CREATIVE STRATEGIES Anthony G. Amsterdam1 Let me start with the ca... more TEACHING ABOUT JUSTICE THROUGH CREATIVE STRATEGIES Anthony G. Amsterdam1 Let me start with the case law on my subject. ... For he tells us there that when Anu, the Lord of the Heavens, and Enlil, the Lord of the Earth, gave the rule of all mankind to Marduk, when ...
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1958
Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the U... more Naked struggle for power between coordinate branches of govern-ment has not been unknown in the United States. The familiar episodes have grown out of grand issues which invited dramatic clashes of mighty forces. When these have occurred the judiciary has not always stood ...