The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts

About the author

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is the author of the book Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present (Routledge) as well as The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts (Pearson) and The U.S. Constitution: An African-American Context (Law and Policy Group Press). She is the recipient of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Justice Award.

She is an award-winning playwright writing under the name Gloria J. Browne. Her plays have been produced in New York City, Brooklyn, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee. Her plays include My Juilliard, Jeanine, Waverly Place, and Killing Me Softly. Her plays explore race, class, and the consequence of life changing choices. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild, Mystery Writers of America, National Association of Black Journalists, and PEN American Center.

Ms. Browne-Marshall is an Associate Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) and the Graduate Center where she teaches Constitutional Law, Race and the Law, and Evidence and is a member of the Gender Studies faculty. She has published articles on racial justice in the field of education as well as book chapters on international criminal tribunals and the rights of female inmates living with HIV/AIDS. She is a Civil Rights attorney who has litigated cases on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc.. She is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court.

Browne-Marshall’s civil rights litigation has involved education, children’s healthcare, and criminal justice issues. Gloria has worked with law and policy issues of concern to vulnerable groups, specifically children, women, and people of color in the United States, Africa, and Europe. She has presented interventions before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on issues of racial justice and is the former Legal Advisor to the Permanent Representation to the United Nations in Geneva and New York of the African Bureau of Educational Sciences/OAU.

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is the Founder and Director of The Law and Policy Group, Inc. The Law and Policy Group is a “think tank for the community” that provides policy information, speakers, public outreach, and legal analysis on issues affecting the lives of children, women, and people of color. The Law and Policy Group, Inc. released the first of an ongoing national Report on the Status of Black Women and Girls(R) in 2008. It is the first national ongoing report on the state of Black females in America. To purchase copies for your school, organization, college or high school student, library, community or individual reference, see: lawandpolicygroup.org/

While in England and Africa as an exchange scholar in Fall 2007, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall began research on a new book project. She currently resides in Manhattan and is completing a book of essays titled The Haunted Woman.



About the book

Written primarily for undergraduate courses in criminal justice, constitutional law, and government, The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts offers the full text of many landmark Supreme Court cases, selected both for the combinations of constitutional issues they involve and for their continuing relevance today.

This text is of particular interest to criminal justice students, because while most constitutional law books used in this field address only criminal cases, The Constitution includes civil cases as well. This is important because various situations involving First Amendment issues, such as protest, can give rise to criminal justice issues when protesters are arrested for disorderly conduct. Thus, in this book the criminal justice (and any other) student is exposed to both civil and criminal Supreme Court cases, along with explanations of their social and historical importance.

The decisions in The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts, chosen from among the thousands available, involve multiple layers of legal conflict, so that by studying them, the student can come to understand converging ideals within the Constitution. They also offer insights into American culture that remain relevant to present-day society, and they provide a road map through the evolution of the Supreme Court and its shifting reasoning on issues such as federalism, protest, the right to counsel, search and seizure, and civil rights.

More about Gloria J. Browne-Marshall:
www.lawandpolicygroup.org
www.racelawsociety.blogspot.com