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 ...
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...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.
In America’s time there have been many great men who have spent their lives creating this great country. Men such as George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson fit these roles. They are deemed America’s “founding fathers” and laid the support for the most powerful country in history. However, one more man deserves his name to be etched into this list. His name was John Marshall, who decided case after case during his role as Chief Justice that has left an everlasting mark on today’s judiciary, and even society itself. Through Cases such as Marbury v. Madison (1803) and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) he established the Judicial Branch as an independent power. One case in particular, named Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), displayed his intuitive ability to maintain a balance of power, suppress rising sectionalism, and unite the states under the Federal Government.
“The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court is a book written by Jeffrey Toobin. Jeffrey Toobin is a staff writer for the New Yorker, as well as, a CNN senior legal analyst. “The Nine” starts in the Reagan and ends in 2007. Toobin discusses all the major cases that the Supreme Court made a ruling on during that time period. He also talks about each of the Justices, their personalities and how they came to make the decisions they did. One of the things that I found most interesting about the book was that Toobin described how the Justices became Justices. Why the President, at the time, nominated them and who were the runners up for the position.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how Chief Justice John Marshall affected the American Judicial System. The reader will therefore first find a brief biography of John Marshall. Then the paper will explain in detail the origins of the Judicial Power to subsequently...
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.
Story, J. (1987). Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press.
The Role of Courts in American Politics The third branch of the federal government is the judicial branch. Before the existence of the Constitution, a system of state courts was in place. Through much controversy and compromise a decision was accomplished, which put in place the Supreme Court. In Article III, Section 1, "The judicial power of the United Statesshall be vested in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The Supreme Court was initially set up as a part of the separation of powers in the American political system.
Jost, Kenneth. "The Federal Judiciary." CQ Researcher 8.10 (1998). CQ Researcher. SAGE Publications. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
The Nine, written by Jeffrey Toobin, describes the Supreme Court. Toobin gives the readers insight to how the court comes to important decisions by describing the justices. Each fairly recent justice has their own part where Toobin explains their personality and life. These stories help the readers understand how the court works and how the court has changed over time. Toobin also goes into detail about some important cases brought to the supreme court, such as Clinton v. Jones. Other cases which continually have arisen over and over through history are referred to several times through the book like Roe v. Wade. Overall, The Nine shows how the court has changed overtime through the different justices.
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 life of every American citizen, whether they realize it or not, is influenced by one entity--the United States Supreme Court. This part of government ensures that the freedoms of the American people are protected by checking the laws that are passed by Congress and the actions taken by the President. While the judicial branch may have developed later than its counterparts, many of the powers the Supreme Court exercises required years of deliberation to perfect. In the early years of the Supreme Court, one man’s judgement influenced the powers of the court systems for years to come. John Marshall was the chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, and as the only lasting Federalist influence in a newly Democratic-Republican government, he and his fellow justices sought to perpetuate their Federalist principles in the United States’ court system. In one of the most memorable court cases of all time--the case of Marbury v. Madison-- Marshall established the idea of judicial review and strengthened the power of the judicial branch in the government. Abiding by his Federalist ideals, Marshall decided cases that would explicitly limit the power of the state government and broaden the strengths of the national government. Lastly, the Marshall Court was infamous for determining the results of cases that dealt with the interpretation of the Constitution and the importance of contracts in American society. The Marshall Court, over the span of a mere three decades, managed to influence the life of every American citizen even to this day by impacting the development of the judicial branch, establishing a boundary between the state and national government, and making declarations on the sanctity of contracts ("The Marshall Court"...
The Warren Court represents the years from 1953 to 1969 when Earl Warren was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Urofsky, 2001). During the sixteen years of the Warren Court seventeen different men served under the leadership of Chief Justice Warren (Urofsky, 2001). These associate judges, and the order in which they took office, played a large part in the decisions that were passed because they affected the shift from a more conservative court in the first half of the Warren Court to a more liberal perspective that was prevalent in the second half of the Warren Court (cite?). It is the later, more liberal era of the Warren Court that is remembered for many of its landmark cases. Of the seventeen justices of the Warren Court there were a few that were consistently influential in decisions and well-known for their opinions. The four most influential and well-known justices other than Chief Justice Warren were Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Joseph Brennan, and Thurgood Marshal...
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 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.
Robert N. Clinton, ‘Judges Must Make Law: A Realistic Appraisal of the Judicial Function in a Democratic Society’ [1981-1982] 67 Iowa L. Rev. 711 http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/ilr67&div=38&g_sent=1&collection=journals accessed 12 February 2012
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