Glass and gavel : the U.S. Supreme Court and alcohol / Nancy Maveety.

Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.

1st edition

89283

United States. -- Supreme Court -- Officials and employees -- Alcohol use.

Liquor law -- United States -- History.

Judges -- Alcohol use -- United States.

1. The Marshall era of punch and the public house

2. The Long Taney era of the mint julep

3. The Chase era: taxing times

4. The Waite era of the grand political saloon

5. The Fuller era: a guilded age of cocktails

6. The White era and the prohibition amendment

7. The Taft era of law, order, and bootlegging

8. The gin cocktail party of the Hughes era

9. The Stone era: rumbustion

10. The old-fashioned Vinson era

11.The Warren era: swanky swilling

12. The Burger era: twilight of the cocktail lounge

13. The Rehnquist era of neotemperance

14. The retro Roberts era: running a tab

Epilogue: a return to normalcy cocktail.

In Glass and Gavel, noted legal expert Nancy Maveety has written the first book devoted to alcohol in the nation's highest court of law, the United States Supreme Court. Combining an examination of the justices' participation in the social use of alcohol across the Court's history with a survey of the Court's decisions on alcohol regulation, Maveety illustrates the ways in which the Court has helped to construct the changing culture of alcohol. "Intoxicating liquor" is one of the few things so plainly material to explicitly merit mention, not once, but twice, in the amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Maveety shows how much of our constitutional law - Supreme Court rulings on the powers of government and the rights of individuals - has been shaped by our American love/hate relationship with the bottle and the barroom. From the tavern as a judicial meeting space, to the bootlegger as both pariah and patriot, to the individual freedom issue of the sobriety checkpoint - there is the Supreme Court, adjudicating but also partaking in the temper(ance) of the times. In an entertaining and accessible style, Maveety shows that what the justices say and do with respect to alcohol provides important lessons about their times, our times, and our "constitutional cocktail" of limited governmental power and individual rights. - Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-351) and index.

9781538111987

x, 367 p. ; 24 cm