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The Great Justices, 1941-54: Black, Douglas, Frankfurter, and Jackson in Chambers

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This book is comprised of profiles of four leading Supreme Court Justices during the (roughly) 1940's through 1970's period. The author suggests he is dissatisfied with judicial biographies because they do not focus on the "dual nature" of the Court--i.e., the Court speaking through not only majority opinions but also via the individual justices involved in contributing to its opinions. Instead, the author posits the idea of "assessment-seeking judicial profiles" as a superior technique.

The author's approach is highly biographical, with some attention to substantive legal developments, and heavy emphasis is placed upon patterns of interaction, agreement, and dissention. Each profile runs around 40 pages. Domnarski pays particular attention to the language of opinions, a task for which he is eminently qualified given his previous important work, "In the Opinion of the Court," which analyzed opinion patterns. I found that this perspective added considerable value to his discussion. After all, opinions are more than just words, but constitute attempts at persuasion and justification as well as explanation.

The profiles vary in quality and impact. One problem is that so much has been written already about Black, Frankfurter, and Douglas. As a result, I found the Black and Frankfurter profiles, while interesting, did not provide new information or perspectives on the Justices. The profile of Robert Jackson, however, is quite impressive, since so little real analysis of Jackson has been written. Students of Jackson await the promised new biography of him by John Q. Barrett since a suitable judicial biography has been lacking up to this point. Domnarski has dug deeply in the record and produced quite a perceptive portrait of Jackson, though one that is perhaps too critical. It is hard to believe that Jackson became much more conservative and combative (as to Black and Douglas) after he was passed over by Truman to be Chief Justice and that this affected his voting patterns. We shall have to await Barrett's analysis to consider this thesis.

I found the strongest profile to be, surpringly, that of William O. Douglas. Here the author had to face the problem of so much already having been written on WOD. Nonetheless, he has produced one of the most interesting discussions of Douglas that I am aware has appeared anywhere. His reliance upon the Douglas/Walter Murphy oral history interviews, done in the early 1960's, is highly effective; it is delightful to discover that all these transcripts are available on the internet. While Douglas certainly had his shortcomings, he stands pretty tall after Domnarski's analysis.

The research is quite solid; the notes extensive; an appendix of voting agreement/disagreement statistics is helpful as well. I think the principal value of the book is for those not familiar with the existing literature on the four justices, because each study packs a lot of information and understanding into a relatively brief amount of space. But even experienced Court watchers can benefit from the author's perceptive discussion of Douglas and especially his suggestive analysis of Jackson.

A short book that falls between pure court history and pure judicial biography. It is for readers deeply interested in the U.S. Supreme Court as an institution, and highlights four famous justices as they interacted in a period now over a half-century past. Using this time and these justices, William Domnarski gives his view on how the high court really works.

Douglas is given the highest marks, with Black, Frankfurter, and Jackson all found wanting in balance. The degree of national elective office political ambition alive then on the court will be a surprise to those more familiar with present day standards--as will the degree of animosity amongst the Brethren.

While good for anyone in the legal or political science professions, I think most general readers will find this book a journey too deep into an ocean of past constitutional and personal battles.