The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court by Bob Woodward, Scott Armstrong
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Book Reviews of The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court
Book Review: Simply Incredible
Summary: 5 Stars
This amazing book really emphasizes the strategic interactions the justices engage in everyday. It's a page turner for scholars and people with only a moderate curiosity about the Court alike. 30 years later, this book is still worthwhile!Book Review: I love this book
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great story about the inside of the supreme court. I read it years ago and it is a great companion piece to Jeffry Tobins recent NINE about more recent years.Book Review: Must Read For Law Students/Court Watchers
Summary: 5 Stars
Woodward & Armstrong's The Brethren is a must read for anyone who is going or has gone to law school or is interested in the Supreme Court.Book Review: Prepare now for the next nomination battle
Summary: 4 Stars
Though a bit dated, The Brethren is still required reading for any who would speak intelligently about U.S. public policy. Undergrads considering a PoliSci major or a pre-law track should get this read before fall classes start. Justice John Paul Stevens is 86 as of this writing so we can expect another nomination circus soon. Opinions will be loud and furious but few of those opinions will be informed or articulate. The reason is that the courts are the least understood of the three branches of the U.S. govt. Americans love court TV but their eyes glaze over at the merest hint at what legal professionals actually do.
Bob Woodward shows his considerable strengths in this collaborative work with Scott Armstrong. We see his uncanny ability to use the "background" style of interview to tease out a vivid picture of a generally inaccessible organization. We also see his ready willingness to place his own views alongside statements of alleged fact without the slightest pause for ethical implications. On p.378 of my hardbound copy, the authors describe an effort by one of the Court clerks to rally dissent against a Warren Burger opinion thusly: "The debate turned not on what the Chief had said or intended, but on what Klein and some other clerks said it might mean." How Woodward read, maybe even wrote that line with a straight face is beyond my comprehension. Woodward is notorious for quoting a person or conversation or describing events at length and ending the otherwise factual paragraph with a summary of his own that sometimes stretches or distorts the obvious meaning hilariously.
Such passages read about like this: The man walked into the courtroom. His body language seemed to say "I have contempt for this hallowed organization and shall devote my energies to its downfall in accordance with my extremist views mwahaha!" (do you see how I said the passages were LIKE this? Clever eh?) In the closing paragraphs of "The Brethren" the authors offer this from p. 444: Five separate Fourth Amendment cases were announced on July 6, the last day of the term. All five ruled against citizens' rights and in favor of the government." That is a pretty terse description of cases which have spilled barrels of ink and a false dichotomy besides (are citizen rights truly protected by a government which fails to protect them from crime?)
The storytelling is clearly slanted against the Burger court but the overall quality of the work makes the bias forgivable. We learn how the members of the Court see their mandate. We see the enormous role the clerks play in shaping the rulings of the Court. Hopefully, we see the imbecility of street demonstrations in front of the Court Building but probably not.
There have been decent books on the SCOTUS since The Brethren but Woodward and Armstrong's work captures a period of transition and evolution. We see the bitter and grudging resignation of William Douglas, one of the longest serving Justices in the history of the Court. We see the machinations behind Roe, busing and capital punishment.
The Brethren is a dense and fairly challenging read but well worth it.
Book Review: "How's it hanging, Chiefy Baby?"
Summary: 4 Stars
The quote above is the way Thurgood Marshall would salute the chief, Warren Burger, when they met in the hallway. When the court had to view porn films to decide whether they are "obscene" or "educational", Marshall once quipped at the end of one such movie, addressing the obviously uncomfortable and prudish Henry Blackmun: "Educational? *I* didn't learn anything new -- what about you, Harry?"
This book, as you can see, had unprecedented information about the supreme court. It is by no means a "evil Nixon destroyed the saintly liberal Warren" job. To the book's great merit, it deals as objectively as possible with the court's decisions -- showing how they were, almost invariably, not the result of "conservatives" vs. "liberals", but of complex interaction of legal views and personal characters.
Let us take, for example, the discussion about the death penalty. The authors present the anti-death-penalty argument given to the court in full, but they also present, in rebuttal, the arguments of the judges who disagreed -- noting that, all in all, there was no constitutional reason to reject the death penalty as "cruel and unusual" per se, but only -- at most -- specific laws that applied it unfairly, and that this is precisely what the court did.
Or take the case about abortion, something many liberals support. Far from being supportive of the decision, the authors note that, whatever the outcome, the court's reasoning in this case was a mess -- essentially the judges acting as doctors and legislators, making "deals" to arrive at a "reasonable" opinion. The authors note that, socially, the court's decision might have been correct, but constitutionally, it was simply wrong.
Why, then, four instead of five start? The issue is simple: credibility. The book's claims ring true; they give a lot of verifiable detail; but you keep asking yourself, how do the authors know all this -- e.g., what happened in judges-only meetings? Who is the "deep throat" inside the court, and how does HE know all of it? Except if one of the judges themselves was the source, which is very unlikely, it is hard to see how they could get all the information.
But that aside, a fascinating book.