Customer Reviews

The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in FDR's Washington

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This book is a gem for anyone interested in the Supreme Court or in this era in particular. It is unlike anything else I have read about the Justices who were part of the Constitutional Revolution of 1937. John Knox's memoir provides a glimpse of people rather than historical figures, and that glimpse explains a lot. His style is conversational and easy to read. And the book is hard to put down.

This book is a delight to read, and throws light on the Supreme Court in the momentous court year of 1936-37 when the Court was saved by Justice Roberts breaking away from the conservative wing of the Court and upholding New Deal laws which, if they had been held unconstitutional, might well have resulted in changes to the Supreme Court such as FDR had requested. The account by John Knox of how he came to be Justice McReynolds' law clerk and the odd life had to lead as such clerk is of much interest. I have seldom read a memoir of greater interest than is this one. Knox himself is a most unusual person, having a effrontery which amazes one looking at it from the viewpoint of history. The book is magnificently edited, with citations which enable one in this computer age to look up the cases mentioned and live the time with Knox. Knox's subsequent career is also of interest, and poignant. This book is a winner, and anyone interested in Supreme Court history will find reading this book extremely rewarding

From the dying days of Russia's Tsarist courts in which the young Kafka sharpened his perception of the absurd, here, similarly is the prophetic voice of a clerk in the blossoming federal judiciary.

Watch carefully over the next decade or so for a similar glimpse behind the curtain of our Oz-esque federal judiciary. The federal bench is a well hidden bastion of intellectual dishonesty and privelege. Coming works of this nature will owe Knox a certain debt. You will read them with a sharper eye for having shared a year with Knox.

After a clerkship ghostwriting for a fat/lazy/corrupt federal district court judge as a "law clerk", this account helped me understand my own mis-steps once I escaped to the saner world of rural criminal defense work.

Our federal courts especially remain a bastion of royalist arrogance. Knox's glimpse should be treasured by anyone encountering the federal courts whether as barrister, litigant or citizen. He speaks a timeless truth against which we are not well armed.

If you're the ultimate policy wonk on 2nd Amendment law, you'll want to read this book just for John Knox's insights into the character of Justice McReynolds who wrote the decision in U.S. v. Miller, 1939. Unfortunately, Knox was no longer clerking for McReynolds in 1939, so we miss the inside story on that landmark decision, but after you've read this book you'll better understand why Miller makes so little sense.