Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court by Jan Crawford Greenburg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[The Court] was jurisprudentially unmoored. During Rehnquist's reign, the justices were in a constant struggle over which of their competing legal theories was most relevant. They had their own philosophies about the law, so the Court could legitimately be characterized as liberal one day and conservative the next."

Another good book on the workings of the Supreme Court of US - likely my most favorite non-fiction topic. Jan Crawford Greenburg's Supreme Conflict (2007) is one of the best works in this particular niche that I have read. I like it as much as the great The Nine and more than my most recent "Supreme read" David Hackett Souter , but maybe only because I am a complete ignoramus in the area of constitutional law. (After the rating I list the links to my reviews of five other Supreme Court studies that I have read recently.)

Ms. Greenburg's book starts - with a literary flair and suspense - on the last day of the 2004-2005 court Supreme Court term, when everybody is expecting the gravely ill Chief Justice W.H. Rehnquist to announce that he is stepping down. This does not happen and it is Justice Sandra O'Connor who soon announces her retirement. The reader will learn the reasons for this unexpected turn of events.

The subtitle of the book, The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, aptly describes the content. The author states that her work has been based on more than one hundred interviews, which included nine justices, many federal courts judges, and other high-ranking officials. Almost all of these interviews have been conducted "on background", meaning that the interlocutors might have been more willing to say things that have not been well known publicly.

Any history of Supreme Court between 1980s and 2000s will necessarily emphasize the influence of three justices: Rehnquist, "the boss", Sandra O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy. Ms. Greenburg particularly focuses on Justice O'Connor, and in my view based on six other books about the highest court during that period, rightly so. I do not think any other justice had more impact on the eventual court rulings than Justice O'Connor. The author shows the mechanisms of her tremendous influence, based on her being a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. With seven out of nine justices nominated by Republican presidents, the Court was neither conservative nor liberal. Ms. Greenburg writes:

"The Court was ideologically adrift, and its course usually depended on which way O'Connor - and to some extent, Kennedy - chose to go."

Later in the book the author quotes a clever metaphor of "hedgehogs and foxes." Hedgehogs "who know one big thing" and foxes, "who know lots of small things."

"[They] bring different skills and perspectives to the Court. The foxes understand compromise and consensus. [...] The hedgehogs [...] think there are right answers in the law. Scalia is a classic hedgehog who is guided by an overarching theory [...]"

Ms. Greenburg uses Justice Breyer as an example of a "fox", but Justice O'Connor would be a more fitting example. My personal view is that the foxes are right: There are no right answers, not in the law and not anywhere else. Compromise and consensus are the only ways of achieving something.

There is a lot of interesting background information on the failed nomination of judge Bork and on the intense disagreements between justices O'Connor and Thomas (the author tries to defend Justice Thomas, but I do not find it very convincing: for me a pragmatist is always right and a dogmatist always wrong). The successful nomination of Justice Roberts (later the Chief Justice) is well portrayed and the best fragments of the book are about the frenzied search for a female candidate when W.H. Rehnquist dies. The convoluted, nasty, and eventually failed process of nominating Harriet Miers shows one of the uglier aspects of politics. A really interesting, very informative, and well-written book!

Four and a quarter stars.

John W. Dean The Rehnquist Choice
Jeffrey Rosen, The Supreme Court; The Personalities and Rivalries that Redefined America
John Anthony Maltese, The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees
Martin Garbus, The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What It Means for Americans
John Paul Stevens,Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir


View all my reviews