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The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America
Times Books
January 2007
On Sale: January 9, 2007
288 pages
ISBN: 0805081828
EAN: 9780805081824
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of
government, and yet the Court is at root a human
institution, made up of very bright people with very strong
egos, for whom political and judicial conflicts often become
personal.
In this compelling work of character-driven history, Jeffrey
Rosen recounts the history of the Court through the personal
and philosophical rivalries on the bench that transformed
the law—and by extension, our lives. The story begins with
the great Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas
Jefferson, cousins from the Virginia elite whose differing
visions of America set the tone for the Court’s first
hundred years. The tale continues after the Civil War with
Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who
clashed over the limits of majority rule. Rosen then
examines the Warren Court era through the lens of the
liberal icons Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, for whom
personality loomed larger than ideology. He concludes with a
pairing from our own era, the conservatives William H.
Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, only one of whom was able to
build majorities in support of his views. Through these four rivalries, Rosen brings to life the
perennial conflict that has animated the Court—between those
justices guided by strong ideology and those who forge
coalitions and adjust to new realities. He illuminates the
relationship between judicial temperament and judicial
success or failure. The stakes are nothing less than the
future of American jurisprudence.
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