Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme CourtDrawing on unprecedented access to the Supreme Court justices and their inner circles, acclaimed ABC News legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg offers an explosive, newsbreaking account of one of the most momentous political watersheds in recent American history. Over the past decade, the central front of America's bitter culture wars has been the titanic battle over the composition and direction of the United States Supreme Court. During that period, no journalist has been closer to the action on the ground-the ideas, the politics, the personalities, the gamesmanship-than ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg. Now, in Supreme Conflict, Greenburg draws on all of her formidable reportorial resources to give a brilliant, vivid, astonishingly unvarnished account of the struggle for the soul of the highest court in the land. Greenburg picks up the plot with the Rehnquist Court, which, despite having seven Republican nominees, proved deeply disappointing to conservatives hoping to reverse decades of progressive rulings on key social issues. She reveals for the first time the real story behind a series of failed Republican nominations that enraged the American conservative movement and left it seething with frustration and resolve not to squander future opportunities. Enter: George W. Bush and the setting of the stage for a full-blown conservative counterrevolution. Supreme Conflictcontains entirely fresh perspectives across the entire sweep of its story, from the conservative movement's early fumbles with the nominations of justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter to its crowning successes with the appointments of justices Roberts and Alito. The book breaks news in its revelations about the effect of Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness on the process; on the truth behind Harriet Miers's disastrous nomination and how it was really scuttled; and on how decades of bruising battles led to the triumph of the conservative agenda with the appointment of two of its leading judicial exponents. Through the entire dramatic story, rich in character and conflict, Greenburg never loses sight of the gargantuan stakes in this struggle, the opposing ideological agendas at play. The story Jan Crawford Greenburg tells is that of the fulcrum event of our time, the massive coordinated campaign to move the Supreme Court in a very different direction, to a more limited and restrictive role in American government. A masterpiece of old-fashioned gumshoe reportage, rich storytelling, and penetrating analysis, Supreme Conflict will be the definitive account of the most consequential shift in the use of American judicial power in almost one hundred years. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - walterqchocobo - LibraryThingAnother interesting, well researched and well documented (lots of case cites for Supreme Court dorks like myself) look at the Supreme Court since Reagan. If you have already read The Nine, it covers ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - bezoar44 - LibraryThingA fast paced and well-informed survey of Republican presidents' (ultimately successful) efforts to turn the U.S. Supreme Court in a conservative direction, culminating in the confirmation of John ... Read full review
Contents
| 1 | |
| 7 | |
| 35 | |
| 65 | |
| 87 | |
THE YOUNGEST CRUELEST JUSTICE | 109 |
CHANGE OF HEART | 139 |
THE CLINTON WAY | 165 |
THE NATURAL | 185 |
EXCEPT HES NOT A WOMAN | 213 |
TRUST ME | 237 |
DECONSTRUCTING MIERS | 263 |
A FULL COUNT | 285 |
Acknowledgments | 317 |
Index | 331 |
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Common terms and phrases
abortion administration advisers agreed Alito announced approach argued arguments asked become began believed Blackmun Bork Bush Bush's called chief justice civil clear clerks conference confirmation conservative considered constitutional criticism decided decision Democrats didn't discuss dissent early federal federal appeals court George Ginsburg going Gonzales hearings interview issue John joined judge judicial Justice Department justices Kelley Kennedy Kennedy's knew later lawyers liberal looked Luttig majority meeting memo Miers moved never nomination O'Connor opinion political position president prospective questions Reagan Rehnquist replace Republican retirement Roberts role rulings Scalia Senate served side Souter suggested Supreme Court talk term thing Thomas Thomas's thought told took turned views vote wanted Washington week White House woman women writing written wrote York
Popular passages
Page 88 - Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into backalley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens...
Page 156 - Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.
Page 159 - At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Page 223 - This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
Page 154 - The abortion decision must therefore "be recognized as sui generis, different in kind from the others that the Court has protected under the rubric of personal or family privacy and autonomy.
Page 156 - The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist that she make the sacrifice.
Page 155 - I need to see you as soon as you have a few free moments. I want to tell you about some developments in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and at least part of what I say should come as welcome news.
Page 83 - One wonders whether the majority still believes that race discrimination — or, more accurately, race discrimination against nonwhites — is a problem in our society, or even remembers that it ever was.
Page 310 - I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich; and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent on me as , according to the best of my abilities and understanding agreeably to the constitution and laws of the United States.
Page 133 - We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there. When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: judicial inquiry is complete.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court |
| Author | Jan Crawford Greenburg |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Penguin, 2007 |
| ISBN | 1594201013, 9781594201011 |
| Length | 340 pages |
| Subjects | › › Political Science / American Government / Judicial Branch |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |