Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to ClintonJustices, Presidents, and Senators is the most comprehensive and accessible history of the first 108 members of the U.S. Supreme Court ever written. Henry J. Abraham, one of the nation's preeminent scholars of the judicial branch, addresses the vital questions of why individual justices were nominated to the highest court, how their nominations were received by legislators of the day, whether the appointees ultimately lived up to the expectations of the American public, and what legacy their jurisprudence left on the development of American law and society. Abraham's insights into the history of the Supreme Court are unrivaled by other studies of the subject; among his numerous observations is that fully one-fifth of the Court's members were viewed as failures by the presidents who appointed them. Enhanced by photographs of every justice--from Chief Justice John Jay in 1789 to the latest appointment, Justice Stephen G. Breyer in 1994--Abraham's eloquent writing and meticulous research guarantee that this book will interest both general readers and scholars. Book jacket. |
Contents
The Nixon | 9 |
Why They Get There | 35 |
The First Forty Years | 53 |
The Next Forty Years | 71 |
The Balance of the Nineteenth Century | 95 |
Into the Twentieth Century | 117 |
FDR and Truman 19331953 | 157 |
The Warren Court | 189 |
The Rehnquist Court | 291 |
Epilogue | 327 |
Rating Supreme Court Justices | 369 |
Statistical Data on Supreme Court Justices | 377 |
Bibliography | 383 |
Photo Acknowledgments | 411 |
Index of Names | 419 |
About the Author 429 | |
The Burger Court | 251 |
Copyright | |