Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court
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.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
- Supreme Court History
