Released September 18, 2007. 369 pages. 
According to a 2006 survey, only 43% of Americans can name one Supreme Court justice; the number of Americans that can name 8 or more of the 9 justices rounds to 0%.
While I am one of the 0% that can name 8 or more of the justices, I cannot get enough information about the court and its inner workings. Jeffrey Toobin's book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court was exactly what I needed to take that knowledge to the next step. Toobin is senior legal analyst for CNN, staff writer at The New Yorker and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
The book does not delve into the minutiae of the court and its opinions, but focuses on the mechanics of how the court does its business and the relationships and idiosyncrasies of the justices and how that ultimately impacts the lives of Americans. He goes through and profiles each justice, starting with their confirmation battle and drops interesting anecdotes (such as the fact that David Souter lives in a rural farmhouse in New Hampshire without a phone) that pull back the curtain on the mysterious and powerful branch of government.
He is obviously biased, framing any conservative gains as radical and using terms such as 'anti-abortionists', while lavishing praise on Sandra Day O'Connor for her centrist views. He does a good job summarizing the court's existing position on abortion and how it got there and which of the justices shaped that position, and does the same on racial preferences, both of which are of extreme interest to me.
The Supreme Court is a mystical and almost unendingly powerful body. In practice 
they operate as 9 philosopher-kings that can pontificate how they believe Americans should live, by reading their own opinions into the Constitution. Only Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito tether their judicial philosophies to the original intent of the Framers. I highly recommend this book (only 7 hours on CD) to any person that wants to be an intelligent citizen. The power and omnipresence of the Supreme Court dictates nothing less.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Book Review: The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
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4 comments:
well, i could name a few of them (thanks largely to two of them recently going through the vetting process), and i'm sure this is a good read, but i don't see it happening.... thanks for doing your part to educate the masses, though.
I'll mail you the CD's.
I couldn't think of Breyer or Kennedy at first.
Since you have a strong interest in abortion, do you plan on seeing Lake of Fire?
No. I respect Tony Kaye for AHX, but the early accounts of this one make me squeamish. Apparently he is using photos of aborted fetuses (plural?), which I don't want to see. I also don't like the extremists on either issue (which he focuses on), or the fact that those on the left (NY Times, etc) bastardize the pro-life position by implying that only christian-wackos are pro-life. Faith has nothing to do with my position on the subject.
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