Books I’ve Read: The Nine [books]

Because of the economy and foreign policy, the issue of Supreme Court Justice Appointments largely fell by the wayside this election cycle, which is a shame because I think it’s extremely important. Reading the Nine this close to the election did help put the issue in perspective.

The Nine is a book by Jeffrey Toobin, NY Times legal correspondent and pundit/talking head extraordinaire. The Nine is mainly about the “Rehnquist Nine”, the nine Justices who comprised the Supreme Court during most of Rehnqust’s tenure as Chief Justice: Rehnquist, O’Connor, Scalia, Thomas, Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The Nine does cover the appointments of Roberts and Alito as well.

The Nine is an extremely thorough and well-written account of the court at this time, and depicts each of the Justices well, with both their strengths and weaknesses. Toobin has a noticeable liberal slant, but I never felt like it was a bias, or that the story was misleading.

This is a great book. Toobin does a masterful job in weaving together the influences that the justices, their clerks, the lawyers, and the parties all have on the outcome of a case. While I am a huge Supreme Court Fanboy, I don’t think of Justices as actual people, but more like figureheads. Toobin pulls out their humanity and their own histories, explaining why they vote the way they do, and why they interact with the other justices the way that they do. The Justices are real people, some of them being quite weird, and it helps to understand where they are coming from as people.

For someone that has been following social issues over the course of the last 8-10 years, reading this book really reminded me of past triumphs and disappointments. While I follow the Supreme Court, I don’t have time to pay attention to all of the nitty-gritty arguments that go on. This book does a great job of summarizing the different positions that were argued, simple enough so most can understand, and with the detail that I crave as an attorney and someone who’s taken classes on constitutional law.

And because it’s tangentially related, I’d also like to HIGHLY recommend Becoming Justice Blackmun. Whether you’re a liberal or conservative, Blackmun was one of the most important justices because of his authorship of Roe v. Wade, and this book, using his own personal letters and correspondence, describes his unlikely path to writing that famous opinion.