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Winner of the 2000 Richard E. Neustadt Award for Best Book on the American Presidency
University Of Chicago Press
December 2001
312 pages ISBN: 0226945464 Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
Drawing on the papers of seven modern presidents-and
firsthand interviews with key figures like Edwin Meese,
Ramsey Clark, and Gerald Ford-David Alistair Yalof
documents and analyzes the strategies used to select
Supreme Court nominees, offering a fascinating and
unprecedented glimpse into executive branch decision making
and the Supreme Court appointment process as a whole. Although the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees
is the most public part of the nomination process, the most
critical phase--the initial selection of nominees--is
usually hidden from view. In Pursuit of Justices, David
Yalof takes the reader behind the scenes of what happens
before the Senate hearings to show how presidents go about
deciding who will sit on the highest court in the land. As
Yalof shows, an intricate web of forces--competing factions
within the executive branch, organized interests, and the
president's close associates--all vie for influence during
this phase of presidential decisionmaking. Yalof draws on the papers of seven modern presidents, from
Truman to Reagan, and firsthand interviews with key
figures, such as Ramsey Clark, Edwin Meese, and President
Gerald Ford. He documents and analyzes the selection
criteria these presidents used, the pool of candidates from
which they chose, their strategies, and the political
pressures affecting their decisions, both successes and
failures. Yalof also disputes much conventional wisdom
about the selection process, including the widely held view
that presidents choose nominees primarily to influence
future decisions of the high court. In a substantial
epilogue, Yalof offers insightful observations about the
selections of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. By focusing on a neglected area of presidential politics,
Yalof offers a fascinating and unprecedented glimpse into
the intricate world of executive branch decisionmaking and
the Supreme Court appointment process as a whole.
Winner of the 2000 Richard E. Neustadt Award for Best Book
on the American Presidency
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