How does the U.S. Supreme Court shape constitutional and political development? In The Collision of Political and Legal Time, Kimberley Fletcher answers this question by analyzing the key role the Court has played in interpreting presidential decision-making in the area of foreign affairs since 1936. She reconsiders the Curtiss-WrightCourt, which instituted a new constitutional order that established plenary powers independent of congressional delegation. Fletcher also reexamines Japanese internment and detainee cases, demonstrating the entrenchment of the new constitutional order and how presidential ascendency becomes institutionalized. Other cases, such as Youngstown, illustrate how the Court, during a time of war, will check Executive power and authority. 

The Collision of Political and Legal Time examines these cases and controversies in foreign policymaking through the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries to show that the Court is not passive or constrained; it does not merely follow politics or the majority coalition. Through her nuanced analysis, Fletcher makes a larger argument about the role of the U.S. Supreme Court as an agent of change, which ultimately transforms power, shapes politics, and redirects history.

Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past. Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration; to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship; to rewrite history and collective memory; to right past wrongs and to arbitrate legal claims and human rights controversies; and to open new thinking about health and well-being. At the same time, in many societies genetic evidence is being called upon to perform a kind of racially charged cultural work: to repair the racial past and to transform scholarly and popular opinion about the “nature” of identity in the present.

Genetics and the Unsettled Past considers the alignment of genetic science with commercial genealogy, with legal and forensic developments, and with pharmaceutical innovation to examine how these trends lend renewed authority to biological understandings of race and history.

This unique collection brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines—biology, history, cultural studies, law, medicine, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology—to explore the emerging and often contested connections among race, DNA, and history. Written for a general audience, the book’s essays touch upon a variety of topics, including the rise and implications of DNA in genealogy, law, and other fields; the cultural and political uses and misuses of genetic information; the way in which DNA testing is reshaping understandings of group identity for French Canadians, Native Americans, South Africans, and many others within and across cultural and national boundaries; and the sweeping implications of genetics for society today.