Customer Reviews

Secret Lives of the Supreme Court

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In general, I love books like this. They typically take obscure figures from history and make them human. Some others in this genre I've liked include Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance and Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence.

I can't include this book among those unfortunately. It starts off surprisingly negative and snarky. Here are some examples:

- A crabby, slave-owning, anti-Catholic bigot [John Jay]
- A crook and a tool of the rich [James Wilson]
- [Trying to rehabilitate Roger Taney is] a bit like saying that apart from the Holocaust, Hitler was a swell guy
- An abrasive boor and virulent anti-Semite without an ounce of common decency [James Clark McReynolds]
- A blustering, imperious phony [Warren Burger]
- A physical oddity more suited for a Victorian-era specimen box [Ruth Bader Ginsburg]

Along those lines are the topics he deems fit to discuss. For example, Schnakenberg has a little blurb about Olive Wendell Holmes' purported impotency. Though he speculates that it resulted from being wounded in battle, that doesn't stop him from playing it up in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink style that seems positively embarrassing (to Schnakenberg):

Shooting Blanks

The "Yankee from Olympus" was no love god ... Holmes had a strictly platonic relationship with his wife, Fanny Dixwell Holmes. (Insert your salacious pun here.) ... problems "down below." ... Whether his flag was flying or not ...

At about Lewis Powell, however, he begins to lighten up, and the rest of the little bios are interesting and not very snarky at all. Not sure if he simply couldn't keep up the snarky pace, has a hard time considering historical context, didn't want to piss off living human beings, or what. Strange.

As others have said the binding on the book leaves a lot to be desired. It's not a book that I would buy for the list price of $17.99. However if you can get it from the library or as a bargain book then it's worth it. It starts off by reviewing the noted Supreme Court justices from the past and ends with the current members of the Supreme Court. It gives facts from their lives and cases they are known for. Then it gives short blurbs about them like they may have been gay or anti-semite or a bigot. It gives you the facts to back it up. It truly isn't what you learned in schoool. However it does keep your interest. I would recommend this book to anyone that's a history buff of little known facts or anyone interested in the court.

Few realize that only nine people have such an enormous effect on the lives of all Americans ... quirky, suprisingly human, yet somewhat mystical in their operation ... a good study in civics, politics, and human nature...

This book literally fell apart the first time I read it. The binding is weak, which more or less made this a book I could only read once. It might as well have been written on a roll of toilet paper. I've contacted the publisher but have had no response. I like the whole Secret Lives series, but this is probably the worst binding I've ever seen.

Secret Lives of the Supreme Court: What Your Teachers Never Told You About America's Legendary Justices
The subtitle of what is basically another waste for downing hundreds of trees to form into a 288 page book is "What Your Teachers Never Told You About America's Legendary Justices".
Of all the information (and conjecture) a teacher can offer his or her students about the justices of the US Supreme Court the kind offered in Mr Schnakenberg's goes under the heading 'Useless tidbits holding no particular value other than gossip and bathroom humor'.

After reading this tome does one get into the reasoning (or emotion) why this justice viewed a case one way or the other? No.
Does Mr Schnakenberg's 'fact' that Mr Justice Holmes "was impotent and had a strictly platonic relationship with his wife, Fanny [Dixwell Holmes]" (p. 41) give us insight behind one of the famous jurist's aphorisms, "If my country wants to go to Hell, I am here to help it" (p. 40) or what is behind "Leany" Holmes's distrust of the idea of equality ("I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy" (p. 46) , true as that might seem)? No.

I was gifted this little book because the donor knew me as a SCOTUS historian and thought it might add some levity to my heavy reading and study, but whilst taking a couple of hours out to lick through these pages I noticed the information provided nothing to my knowledge of these justices. [Just after this brief 'review' my copy will be donated to a local charity's flea-market efforts, with the approval of its original donor.]

All of that said, if one desires to spend an hour reading an 'under-the-bench' history of this (sometimes) august legal chamber I am sure the contents of "Secret Lives" of the SCrt will either tickle some funny bone or raise the ire of some justice's ardent defender. [The author really lays into my favorite justice, who is not Holmes, by the way.] If you like getting your information about the Court from People Magazine or The National Enquirer then this book is just what the doctor ordered (or pick it up a local flea-market). It is the kind of information that one would bring up at a cocktail party and you could springboard a conversation by offering up: 'Did you know that Truman called his choice for the SCrt bench, Tom Clark (1949-61, associate justice), "such a dumb son of a bitch"?' (p. 139)

3-Stars because it offers what it says it will offer; I took off 2-Stars because his research is generic-based, though commendable in a couple instances.