Bad Glacier

The Supreme Court, by William Rehnquist (yeah, the Chief Justice!)

This book calls itself a history of the Supreme Court, but that’s not quite right. There is a good amount of history in the book, but it’s only one of three main topics covered. The Chief Justice only discusses the Court from Chief Justice Marshall (early 1800s) through the Warren Court (late 1960s) to avoid cases he worked on as a Justice, but he also writes about his experience clerking for Justice Jackson and spends several chapters describing the inner workings of the Court. So it’s not really a history, not really a memoir, and not really an insider’s account of the Court, but it has elements of all these.

The book uses influential Justices and important cases to show how the Court, despite its missteps along the way, has managed to take and retain its place as a full-fledged branch of government, despite repeated attempts by the other branches to control or intimidate the Court. Rehnquist’s writing is clear and interesting. Throughout the book, the Chief Justice aims the discussion of cases at the “interested, informed layman,” so it isn’t difficult to keep up.

The chapters discussing his clerkship talk a lot about the decision-making process and the personalities of the Justices on the Court at the time, but they have a different feel from the rest of the book. You feel like you learn something about Rehnquist’s personality as you read them, unlike the more objective historical chapters. This same split occurs when he describes the working of the current Court. At some points, he talks about the process he uses to come to a decision and write an opinion, and at other points he just dryly reports the days and times the Court considers certiorari petitions. It’s inevitable, I guess; the personal part of the book is not large enough to be published on its own, and it would be tough to reach the book’s intended audience without including some personality along with the historical parts.

As it is, the book is a good one for future law students. It exposes you, on a fairly shallow level, to some important cases and keeps your attention with the opinions, anecdotes, and observations of the current Chief Justice.

Next up: The Brethren, as recommended by chicken magazine

This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2005 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Books, Law!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.