The Supreme Court

This "illuminating look at the human side of the highest court" reveals how personal and philosophical rivalries have shaped our daily lives (Kirkus).

The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government. Yet behind its facade of absolute impartiality are the human personalities who decide its rulings: very bright people with very strong egos, for whom legal conflicts often become personal. In this incisive volume, Jeffrey Rosen provides a character-driven history of the Court, revealing how the individual quirks and attitudes of justices have transformed the law and, by extension, our lives. 

Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson, cousins from the Virginia elite, set the tone for the Court's first hundred years with their differing visions of America. After the Civil War, Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes clashed over the limits of majority rule. During the Warren Court, personality loomed larger than ideology for liberal icons Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. And the contemporary Court was in many ways defined by the clashes between conservatives William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia.

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.