Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court [Hardcover]

Edward P. Lazarus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1998

The Supreme Court of the United States is the most powerful court in the world.  It is also the branch of our government most shrouded in mystery, misunderstanding, and myth..  Isolated in a marble temple, supposedly insulated from the pressures of politics, nine unelected Justices are charged with protecting our most cherished rights and shaping our fundamental laws.  They are assisted by roughly thirty-six law clerks each year, the best and brightest  of the nation's young lawyers, who routinely  go on to fill the highest ranks of our government, courts, law schools, and law firms.

Never before has one of these clerks stepped forward to reveal how the Court really works--and why it often fails the country and the cause of justice. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning historian Edward Lazarus, a former clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun, guides the reader through the Court's inner sanctum, explaining as only an eyewitness can the collisions of law, politics, and personality as the Justices wrestle with the most fiercely disputed issues of our time.  Part memoir, past history, and all spellbinding narrative, Closed Chambers provides an intimate portrait and devastating  critique--Justice by Justice--of a court at war with itself and in neglect of its constitutional  duties.

From the conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist's apparent attempt to influence the 1992 election by delaying a crucial abortion case to liberal champion Justice William Brennan's ill-conceived and ultimately self-defeating campaign to sabotage the death penalty, Lazarus's riveting account shows us a Court broken into scheming factions whose members resort to crass political calculations and transparently hypocritical arguments as they discard legal principles for bottomline results.  The Justices further compound this cliquish antagonism by granting excessive power to immature, ideologically driven clerks, who then use that power to manipulate their bosses and the institution they ostensibly serve.

Edward Lazarus took part in the Court's internal battles over the death penalty, affirmative action, abortion, and other momentous issues.  Here, he weaves together past and present to show us in astonishing detail not only the tragic failings of the modern Court, but also what led to them, and why they are so devastating for the nation.  Unprecedented in its revelations and unparalleled in the brilliance of its analysis, Closed Chambers is the most important book on the Supreme Court in a generation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Edward Lazarus, a former Supreme Court clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun, spills the beans on an institution that values silence. Nobody is supposed to understand what happens behind the scenes of the high court--that's why the justices rarely speak to the media--but Lazarus tells all he knows from his time as a top aide to Blackmun in the Supreme Court's 1988 term. There's a lot of legal theory and history, but it's well presented and usually focuses on touchstone issues in U.S. politics; cases involving abortion, the death penalty, and racial preferences receive sustained treatment in these pages. There are gossipy bits, too, revealing unflattering details about several current justices. Sure to be one of the more controversial books of the year. --John J. Miller

From Library Journal

Part memoir, part constitutional history, this volume by a former law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun reflects both his own experience at the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1988-89 term and substantial and original research. Lazarus, now a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, is a fine writer who makes accessible the legal esoterica behind the compelling struggles about such issues as the death penalty, abortion, and the role of race in the law. But his story is really a lamentation over, in his view, inconsistent and irrational adjudication, driven to an unprecedented degree by ideology and the manipulation practiced by unprincipled law clerks. Justices Kennedy and Brennan come in for particular attack on these grounds, while Justice Souter warrants his praise. Whether Lazarus is right or wrong in his assessment, this book is big news?few law clerks write such behind-the-scenes accounts. The clarity and authority with which he writes makes his contribution to the literature on the Supreme Court even more valuable. Recommended for all libraries.?Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (March 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812924029
• ISBN-13: 978-0812924022
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #586,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Law > Current Affairs

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A restrained view of ideological splits at the Supreme Court, April 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court (Hardcover)

Lazarus, who clerked for Justice Blackmun during the 1988-89 term, has written a behind-the-scenes look at the court and its decisions during that term. He focuses on abortion and capital punishment cases; somewhat surprisingly, he doesn't discuss the growth of "federalism." His overall thesis is that the overpoliticization of the Supreme Court nomination process, as exemplified by Bork's rejection, has resulted in a deep split between liberals and conservatives on the court, with the outcome in the control of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, both of whom are too much subject to the influence of their clerks, especially a well-organized, highly partisan group of conservative clerks.

The book combines the clerk-driven content of "The Brethren" with documentary evidence from the Thurgood Marshall papers and a more sophisticated analysis of the legal issues. It provides a more complete view of Chief Justice Rehnquist's work style and why he has been so much more effective than Chief Justice Burger at effectuating the conservative legal agenda. It shows how the troubling developments of that period, such as the cert pool, have grown into monsters. It looks briefly at the newest justices (Thomas, Ginsberg, Breyer) and accurately characterizes Ginsberg so as to explain her frequent alliance with Rehnquist.

The book, despite its publicity, tells no tales out of school. It is much less chatty than "The Brethren." Its tone follows Justice Blackmun into sentimentality. With news reports missing or giving less space to the ideological battles occasionally revealed by the court's decisions, lay followers of the court should make a point of reading this book.

39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars compares favorably to Brethren, but focused on law, January 2, 2005

By 

Donovan G. Rinker "donoglen" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court (Mass Market Paperback)

Given that a fairly large number of my classmates at Harvard had high aspirations of clerking on the Supreme Court, it was always surprising to me that none of them had read this book. Reading through the (often unfair) reviews here, it is not surprising why.

Several complaints of Lazarus' 'unfair' attitudes are evinced: Lazarus focuses on abortion, discrimination, and death penalty 'snapshots' from a legal historical perspective then turns to the inner workings of the court.

Shallower readers more interested in Grisham or other fiction might object to Lazarus' description of the Scottsboro case: a legal reader wouldn't begin trying to understand death penalty litigation without that critical starting point. Lazarus describes death penalty obstructionists as dueling with death penalty hawks - such as law clerks who threw parties when executions were carried out, while Marshall/Brennan clerks conducted vigils.

After Woodward/Armstrong's scathing reviews of Blackmun in 'The Brethren,' one cannot fault Lazarus for striving to resuscitate Blackmun's career. After all, the man read deeply, thought profoundly, and cared tremendously about his legacy (which comes down, for better or worse, to Roe v. Wade).

And this drives the large number of deprecatory reviews: people who hate Roe v. Wade will hate anything written about Blackmun with the slightest degree of fairness, deriding the author unfairly and underscoring his claims that closed, prejudiced (or at least, pre-judged) minds dominate, and only a few are willing to stand up to them.

Particularly telling is the origin of the 'centrist' coalition - O'Connor, Kennedy, and temporarily, Souter - which stood against Marshall/Brennan/Stephens (the liberal wing) and Rehnquist/Scalia (the conservative wing).

All of which is dull, tiresome reading for those looking for journalistic treatments of wheeling and dealing. Those looking for such writing should turn to Woodward/Armstrong's 'The Brethren.' Those looking for more informed history should turn to Morton Horwitz's treatises.

But for understanding the role of a clerk - the power and limits - as well as precious insights into Blackmun, an enigmatic jurist unloved by liberals or conservatives, and to read these treatments along with concise, and quite balanced legal history - this is a fine book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Riveting and Thoughtful Story of Law and Politics, January 8, 2002

By 

Random Joys "nicholasgeo" (Carmel, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court (Mass Market Paperback)

I approached CLOSED CHAMBERS in response to hearing that a Supreme Court Clerk--a coveted one-year position as assistant to the Justices gained by a handful of top law graduates each year--had written a book about the experience and the Court reacted by tightening its rules. Instead of scandal, however, in CLOSED CHAMBERS I found a profound analysis of burning legal questions, primarily the death penalty and abortion. The author does not use the clerk's vantage point to sully the reputation of the Court or to give the impression of arbitrariness in the process by which the Supreme Court reaches its decisions. This unique perspective is used to show the reader the human side of the process, and show how the democratic decisions of the electorate came to influence policy through the persons that the elected, mostly Republican, Presidents could get approved by the mostly Democratic Senate. Of course, this seems genuinely interesting to me, because I realize the unavoidably subjective and political nature of much legal decision-making. Others might see the same text as debasing the sanctity of the objectivity of the law. The decisions of the Supreme Court have not been considered objective application of the law' in many decades--but, yes, the few who might read CLOSED CHAMBERS believing in objective application of the law might be surprised to find acknowledgment of subjectivity, here as in practically every other book about law written in the last 100 years.

The book offers little, if any, gossip and much legal reasoning. The history of the death penalty litigation occupies the greater part of the book, and is given in rich historical detail. Somewhat less time is spent on abortion, but the analysis there is even stronger--perhaps because the author does not overextend his arguments in reaction to the outcome.

The outcome in the death penalty litigation is that the Supreme Court has not only considered the death penalty proper from the perspective of constitutional law, but has also curtailed the appeals process, has approved 'victim impact statements', and has accepted the disproportional application of the death penalty. All this runs strongly against the author's beliefs and sense of justice. His response is to document each expansion of the application of the death penalty extensively and to make it appear as a morally contra-indicated political decision. While I agree that it is a political decision, I cannot see that any argument based on 'objective legal reasoning' could be made either way. The content of the Constitution's 'cruel and unusual' punishment clause is defined by the Supreme Court, and the electorate who elected a string of tough-on-crime, Republican Presidents, caused the definition of 'cruel and unusual' to not preclude the death penalty. While this may contravene the sense of morality of a large minority, it is the result of persistent democratic will, which is well nigh unassailable. The political Left would be well advised to accept the majority's decision and avoid squandering political capital on a closed issue.

The author's strongest argument against the death penalty is based on statistical evidence. The death penalty is imposed more frequently if the victim is Caucasian than if the victim is African American. From this, the author concludes that prosecutorial discretion drives the difference. This would mean that prosecutors are racially biased, the same way as an employer with disproportionate hiring biases. But that is not necessarily the case. My view is that the disparity is consistent with the acceptance of victim impact statements. Juries and more generally the criminal justice system should impose different penalties for different harms to society. The statistics and the victim impact statements suggest that juries adjust deterrence by the social harm and the disruption caused by different murders. The identity of the victim matters for the degree of disruption suffered by a society and for its deterrence. It is telling that the statistical study shows that the racia bias diminishes (without disappearing) when all factors are included in the multiple regression.

With this caveat that the book wails a bit much about the death penalty, its analysis is extraordinarily appealing. The reader gets history, law, facts, the social environment between the Justices and the clerks at a politically charged time. The legal scene of the eighties and early nineties is transmitted as high drama.

Then, just as dramatically, the author produces the same synthesis for abortion. After the fall of the liberal cause in the case of the death penalty, the book's abortion narrative is truly suspenseful. Still, the author shares the resentment of the left at the restrictions placed on reproductive freedom and its unequal availability, as a result of the Supreme Court's upholding of federal and state refusal to finance abortions. In the abortion segment of the book, the analysis is stronger. In addition to the privacy concern, the author reveals the much more recent and persuasive argument--and an argument that appears to be the author's own--that abortion is not only about privacy but also about equality between the sexes. A policy that forces the gestation of embryos burdens women but not men. Only women must give their body, time, and freedom. The recent statistical findings of Donahue and { that legalized abortion reduced the crime of offspring without reducing the number of children that women had, adds a crucial additional argument that has recently surfaced.

To conclude, CLOSED CHAMBERS is a fascinatingly thoughtful book, a rivetingly dramatic account of a tumultuous period of the legal history of the nation. If you are interested in these legal battles, you will love the book.