Includes bibliographical references and index

Judicial review : the democratic anomaly -- Establishing judicial review : Marbury v. Madison -- The Cherokees -- Dred Scott -- Little Rock -- A present-day example -- The basic approach -- Congress, statutes, and purposes -- The executive branch, administrative action, and comparative expertise -- The states and federalism : decentralization and subsidiarity -- Other federal courts : specialization -- Past court decisions : stability -- Individual liberty : permanent values and proportionality -- The President, national security, and accountability : Korematsu -- Presidential power : Guantánamo and accountability.

Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution's text or to the eighteenth-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circumstances--an approach that will best demonstrate to the public that the Constitution continues to serve us well.--