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The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court
Penguin
May 2005
608 pages ISBN: 0143035274 Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
The Supreme Court of
the United States is the most powerful court in the
world. It is also the branch of our government
most shrouded
in mystery, misunderstanding, and
myth.. Isolated in a
marble temple, supposedly insulated from the pressures of
politics,
nine unelected Justices are charged with protecting our
most cherished
rights and shaping our fundamental laws. They
are assisted
by roughly thirty-six law clerks each year, the best and
brightest of the nation's young lawyers, who
routinely go on to fill the highest ranks of our
government,
courts, law schools, and law firms.
Never
before has one of these clerks stepped forward to reveal
how the Court
really works--and why it often fails the country and the
cause of
justice. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning
historian Edward
Lazarus, a former clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun,
guides the reader
through the Court's inner sanctum, explaining as only an
eyewitness can
the collisions of law, politics, and personality as the
Justices
wrestle with the most fiercely disputed issues of our
time. Part memoir, past history, and all
spellbinding
narrative, Closed Chambers provides an intimate
portrait and
devastating critique--Justice by Justice--of a
court at war
with itself and in neglect of its
constitutional duties.
From
the conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist's apparent attempt
to
influence the 1992 election by delaying a crucial abortion
case to
liberal champion Justice William Brennan's ill-conceived
and ultimately
self-defeating campaign to sabotage the death penalty,
Lazarus's
riveting account shows us a Court broken into scheming
factions whose
members resort to crass political calculations and
transparently
hypocritical arguments as they discard legal principles for
bottomline
results. The Justices further compound this
cliquish
antagonism by granting excessive power to immature,
ideologically
driven clerks, who then use that power to manipulate their
bosses and
the institution they ostensibly serve.
Edward
Lazarus took part
in the Court's internal battles over the death penalty,
affirmative
action, abortion, and other momentous
issues. Here, he
weaves together past and present to show us in astonishing
detail not
only the tragic failings of the modern Court, but also what
led to
them, and why they are so devastating for the
nation. Unprecedented in its revelations and
unparalleled in
the brilliance of its analysis, Closed Chambers is
the most important book on the Supreme Court in a
generation.
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