The Brethren – Inside the Supreme Court: Book Review
The Brethren, co-authored by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, is an in-depth documentary of the United States Supreme Court from 1969 to 1975, under the leadership of Warren Burger. The book attempts to present the reader with what "really" goes on in the Supreme Court. It describes the conferences, the personality of justices, and how justice's feel toward each other, items which are generally hidden from the public. This book is comparable to a lengthy newspaper article. Written more as a source of information than of entertainment, The Brethren is the brutal truth, but not boring. The storytelling is clearly slanted against the Burger court but the overall quality of the work makes the bias forgivable. Readers learn how the members of the Court see their mandate and also see the enormous role the clerks play in shaping the rulings of the Court.
The Brethren shows the flowering of Nixon's four judicial selections: Warren E. Burger, Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist. The final chapter introduces President Ford's only appointment, John Paul Stevens. Burger was Nixon's first appointee, replacing retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren. By the late 1960s, federal courts and school districts were struggling with court ordered busing. Once Burger joined the court, the longtime Nixon friend clearly showed an interest in moving away from these liberal decisions. However, Woodward goes to great lengths to illustrate how Burger's indecision, lack of tact, poor legal reasoning and overall gauche demeanor hampers his own effectiveness.
The book takes heavy aim at what author feels are Burger's negative personality traits. The Chief's pettiness manifested ...
... middle of paper ...
...ch as ideology, compromise, persuasive arguments, and even interaction with the clerks. It could be used as a textbook for a course on the Supreme Court. Trust in the political system was both strengthened and weakened by this book. I was impressed by how difficult it is to confirm an appointment to the Supreme Court. Not just anyone can become a Supreme Court justice, but selection is limited to political insiders who don't always know what America is all about. A book like this keeps Washington on its toes. It reminds politicians that someone is always watching, and even the closest colleague may be willing to talk. The average American probably wouldn't read this book. If they did, they would only pay attention to cases that could possibly pertain to them. It could definitely make some readers angry and confused, causing them to question the whole political system.
The court case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) is credited and widely believed to be the creator of the “unprecedented” concept of Judicial Review. John Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice at the time, is lionized as a pioneer of Constitutional justice, but, in the past, was never really recognized as so. What needs to be clarified is that nothing in history is truly unprecedented, and Marbury v. Madison’s modern glorification is merely a product of years of disagreements on the validity of judicial review, fueled by court cases like Eakin v. Raub; John Marshall was also never really recognized in the past as the creator of judicial review, as shown in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
“Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it’s set a rolling it must increase (Charles Caleb Colton).” Colton describes that once corruption has begun, it is difficult to stop. Corruption has existed in this country, let alone this very planet, since the beginning of time. With corruption involves: money, power, and favoritism. Many people argue today that racism is still a major problem to overcome in today’s legal system. American author (and local Chicago resident) Steve Bogira jumps into the center of the United States justice system and tells the story of what happens in a typical year for the Cook Country Criminal Courthouse, which has been noted as one of the most hectic and busiest felony courthouses in the entire country. After getting permission from one of the courthouse judges’ (Judge Locallo) he was allowed to venture in and get eyewitness accounts of what the American Legal System is and how it operates. Not only did he get access to the courtroom but: Locallo’s chambers, staff, even his own home. In this book we get to read first hand account of how America handles issues like: how money and power play in the court, the favoritism towards certain ethnic groups, and the façade that has to be put on by both the defendants and Cook County Workers,
For more than a dozen years, Clarence Earl Gideon lay buried in a nondescript, unmarked grave in Hannibal, Missouri. Most Americans outside of the legal community (and many within it) would neither recognize Gideon's name, nor understand the seismic impact he had on our legal system. Fortunately, Anthony Lewis, the renowned journalist now retired from The New York Times, chronicled Gideon's saga from the filing of his hand-written petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court to the momentous decision of March 18, 1963. Lewis brings to life the story of the man behind the case, the legal machinations of the court appointed lawyer (and others working with him) toiling on Gideon's behalf and the inner-workings of the Supreme Court. By telling the story, Lewis has preserved an important piece of legal and social history and we are all the richer for his doing so.
Jost, Kenneth. "The Federal Judiciary." CQ Researcher 8.10 (1998). CQ Researcher. SAGE Publications. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
In this course we have had a brief but informative insight into the roles of government, and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is perceived as one body of the federal government, and it is a powerful one at most times. With of all this power and the decision making, it is normal to wonder if the court is influenced by political views, beliefs or even ideas. It is being questioned in our course if the Supreme Court is influenced by the dominant political ideas of the time and if the courts just follow those ideas and that is the topic I plan to address, but I also wish to address that politics are not the only influence on the Supreme Court and its decisions. I do feel that the court has been influenced because with so many views and beliefs it’s hard not to have an opinion even in such political matters. Although situations in political vary so do the opinions of those in the court, the effect is no different in any given situation. The influences are simply not just political either, but that is where the major opinion lies. I plan to look at not only how politics influence our Supreme Court, but how other matters such as personal opinion and background influence the court’s decisions on political discussions as well.
In 1787 Article three of the constitution created the Supreme Court, but not until 1789 was it configured. The way it was originally set up was with one Chief Justice and five associate judges, with all six members being appointed for life. This court serves as the “supreme law of the land”, it has the power to determine if state or federal laws are in conflict with how the Court interprets the constitution.
The Supreme Court, which sees almost 150 petitions per week, called cert petitions, must carefully select the cases that they want to spend their time and effort on (Savage 981). If they didn’t select them carefully, the nine justices would quickly be overrun, so they have put in place a program to weed through the court cases to pick out the small number they will discuss. There are a few criteria that are used to judge whether or not a case will be tried. The first is whether or not the lower courts decided the case based on another one of the Supreme Court’s decisions for they will investigate these in order to withhold or draw back their conclusion that they made in their court case. Another is the case’s party alignment: sometimes the justices will pick cases that will align with their party beliefs, like trying to get a death row inmate off of his death sentence. They also make claims about the “life” of the case- the Supreme Court only hears “live” cases- they do not try to go back in time and re-mark a case that has long since been decided (Savage 981). Lastly, they like to take cases where the lower courts did not decide with one another -these cases can have t o do with interpretations of the law that have been left up to the lower courts and should be specifically defined by the Supreme Court (Savage 982).
The 1810 Supreme Court case, Fletcher v. Peck, is one to remember. It covered the hard topics of bribery in the government, the government’s ability to control the people and where the government’s power ends. This case also solidified the fine print in contracts and was the first time the Supreme Court ruled a state law unconstitutional. Fletcher v. Peck was the cause of a monumental shift in the different views of the American
Blasi, V. (1983). The Burger Court: The Couner-Revolution That Wasn't. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shnayerson, Robert. The Illustrated History of The Supreme Court Of The United States. New York: Abrams, 1986.
Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Columbia Law Review, 104, 1-20. doi:10.2307/4099343. Reynolds, S. (2009). The 'Standard'. An interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The significant impact Robert Dahl’s article, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: the Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker” created for our thought on the Supreme Court it that it thoroughly paved the way towards exemplifying the relationship between public opinion and the United States Supreme Court. Dahl significantly was able to provide linkages between the Supreme Court and the environment that surrounds it in order for others to better understand the fundamental aspects that link the two together and explore possible reasoning and potential outcomes of the Court.
Lately, the American Highest Court has been attractive in liberal engagement. Such liberal involvement has been ongoing since the arrival of the Hole Court, sustained through the Burger Law court and into the Rehnquist Law court. The best-known case of liberal involvement is Roe v. Wade in which the Law court struck down preventive abortion laws as sacrilegious ‘the correct to privacy’ it had before found characteristic in the ‘owing process’ section of the Fourteenth Alteration. The renowned