Congress, the constitution, and divided government - Field, Matthew O. (LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC, 2013)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Introduction: Congress and the Constitution -- The Civil Rights Act of 1991 -- The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 -- The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 -- Deliberation, affiliation, and our political system
Congressional constitutional deliberation is circumscribed by the political regime and time within which it takes place. By understanding the three cases studied here to have taken place within affiliated time, by which they inhabit and exhibit specific regime constructs, the political regime and political time paradigms are affirmed. Each case demonstrates the importance of regime contestation: the normative debate between competing national governing coalitions. Congress acts as a partisan institution functioning within a political environment encompassing both fundamental ""settled"" values