The Supreme Court
The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America
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Narrated by:
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Alan Sklar
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By:
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Jeffrey Rosen
About this listen
The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and judicial conflicts often become personal.
In this compelling work of character-driven history, Jeffrey Rosen recounts the history of the Court through the personal and philosophical rivalries on the bench that transformed the law - and by extension, our lives. The story begins with the great Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson, cousins from the Virginia elite whose differing visions of America set the tone for the Court's first hundred years. The tale continues after the Civil War with Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who clashed over the limits of majority rule. Rosen then examines the Warren Court era through the lens of the liberal icons Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, for whom personality loomed larger than ideology. He concludes with a pairing from our own era, the conservatives William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, only one of whom was able to build majorities in support of his views.
Through these four rivalries, Rosen brings to life the perennial conflict that has animated the Court, between those justices guided by strong ideology and those who forge coalitions and adjust to new realities. He illuminates the relationship between judicial temperament and judicial success or failure. The stakes are nothing less than the future of American jurisprudence.
The Supremes: listen to more about the Supreme Court.©2007 Jeffrey Rosen (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Spectacularly Dry
- By CMP on 07-27-18
By: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and others
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Thomas Jefferson
- By: R. B. Bernstein
- Narrated by: Phil Holland
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Jefferson designed his own tombstone, describing himself simply as "Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia". It is in this simple epitaph that R. B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder - not as a great political figure, but as leader of "a revolution of ideas that would make the world over again". In Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein offers the definitive short biography of this revered American - the first concise life in six decades. Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into a swift, insightful, evenhanded account.
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In-Depth and Interesting
- By Sarahi Nieves on 04-24-19
By: R. B. Bernstein
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The Second Amendment
- A Biography
- By: Michael Waldman
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights. At a time of increasing gun violence in America, Waldman's book provoked a wide range of discussion. This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men - who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present.
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were not paying attention, just passed it
- By Donald LaFave on 02-27-21
By: Michael Waldman
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The Three Lives of James Madison
- Genius, Partisan, President
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
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Cogently organized, meticulously balanced
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 06-15-18
By: Noah Feldman
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers
- By: Brion McClanahan Ph. D.
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Here to rescue the reputations of our Founding Fathers from the plague of modern political correctness is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers. Author and Professor Brion McClanahan shows how patriots like Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton laid the foundations of American civil liberty and had a better understanding of the problems facing us today than our current Congress.
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Highly Recommended
- By Colleen H. on 08-13-09
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The Constitution Today
- Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era
- By: Akhil Reed Amar
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When the stories that lead our daily news involve momentous constitutional questions, present-minded journalists and busy citizens cannot always see the stakes clearly. In The Constitution Today, Akhil Reed Amar, America's preeminent constitutional scholar, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades. He shows how the Constitution's text, history, and structure are a crucial repository of collective wisdom, providing specific rules and grand themes relevant to every organ of the American body politic.
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Amar is a Brilliant Arguer
- By MJ Schirmer on 11-16-16
By: Akhil Reed Amar
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How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America
- By: Brion McClanahan
- Narrated by: Thomas Rosenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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He is the star of a hit Broadway musical, the face on the 10-dollar bill, and a central figure among the founding fathers. But do you really know Alexander Hamilton? Rather than lionize Hamilton, Americans should carefully consider his most significant and ultimately detrimental contribution to modern society: the shredding of the United States Constitution. Connecting the dots between Hamilton's invention of implied powers in 1791 to transgender bathrooms and same-sex marriage today, Brion McClanahan shows the origins of our modern federal leviathan.
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Thank You Audible
- By No to Statism on 10-03-18
By: Brion McClanahan
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents
- From Wilson to Obama
- By: Steven F. Hayward
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. That’s the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leaders - the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts - who reshaped the United States in line with their grand “vision” for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these “great” presidents inevitably expanded government - and shrank our liberties.
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Really enjoyed it
- By Jkc-007 on 02-15-17
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John Marshall
- The Man Who Made the Supreme Court
- By: Richard Brookhiser
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The life of John Marshall, founding father and America's premier chief justice. In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth chief justice of the US. He would hold the post for 34 years (still a record), expounding the Constitution he loved. Before he joined the Court, it was the weakling of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout. After he died, it could never be ignored again.
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Excellent Biography
- By Jean on 12-14-18
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American Sphinx
- The Character of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Susan O'Malley
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight. Historian Joseph J. Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams".
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So: they did the DNA and … time to change appendix
- By Jamanosa on 11-03-21
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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What listeners say about The Supreme Court
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Leigh A
- 03-03-07
Supreme listen
You would not be reading this review if you were not interested in the subject. So I can highly recommend the book to you. It is well written with biographical outlines of the personalities involved and the case histories that exemplify the outcomes both at the time and in retrospect. Personal views of the author are evident but do not detract from the content.
Sklar’s narration makes the book. A lesser narrator could have made the author’s lecture like presentation dry. I will look for more of his work.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- David H.
- 04-27-07
Good, but some bias
This book is very interesting and offers a look into some important personalities in the Court's history. The premise of the book is that judges are more effective when they compromise their ideals to gain incremental changes and when they build rapport with other justices. This is defined as "judicial temperament" by the author.
Each judge's judicial temperament and effectiveness is profiled in comparison to a contemporary with an opposite temperament. The author veers from his course when discussing Justice Scalia, though.
Jefferson is presented as brilliant, but idealistic. Holmes is brilliant, but self-absorbed. Douglas is brilliant, but self-aggrandizing. Scalia, who is also brilliant, is presented is little more than an acerbic dogmatist with a biting wit.
More than any other justice profiled, the author attempts to evaluate the merits of Scalia's legal opinion - uniformly drawing on the opinions of those opposed to Scalia's jurisprudential philosophy.
Much is made of the Bush v. Gore case, for example. The author quotes Scalia's recital of the legal basis for an injunction - something not terribly exciting in the real world. Yet, it is presented as a prediction of the outcome of the vote count. "Scalia's prediction was wrong," the author chides.
The real-world inconsequence of Scalia's statement in the injunction and the overzealous attention paid to it by some are traceable directly back to political flamethrowers working for Gore, not to any legal scholar. There are several other examples of heavily-biased criticisms that are uncharacteristic for this book.
In the end, I felt that I had been set up - that the book's premise was really just a pretense to launch an assault on Scalia. The author stretches legal reasoning to make Scalia seem inconsistent on issues where he is steadfastly consistent.
I still enjoyed the book, but I could have done without the bias.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Shunnon
- 10-04-10
A lot of fun.
No longer are these people just bobble heads on top of black robes. This is such a guilty pleasure. To discover that our justices are regular people with all of the quirks and brillance that make us human makes it so worth the download. Beware! If you are a Supreme Court geek like I am your just gonna want to know more. This really is Edu-tainment!
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Trevor Burnham
- 02-14-07
Excellent history
While not a comprehensive history of the Supreme Court, this book does illuminate key periods in the court's history by tying the judicial philosophies of justices such as Marshall and Warren to those of contemporary justices such as O'Connor and Scalia. The book is succinctly written and well-read, and while an academic work, it avoids being too dry. A must-read for anyone interested in legal philosophy or American history.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Don
- 05-15-07
Excellent listen
This is an outstanding book -- thoughtful, well-researched, well-written, and well-narrated. Rosen's thesis is both intriguing and argued compellingly. He offers valuable insights about the court that apply to other dimensions of our public, political life.
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3 people found this helpful
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- William
- 01-24-15
Broad overview of the Court
Very well written and researched. Seemed impartial as well. I recommend it but I did find it a bit rambling and repetitious. Not as compelling as others but still worth the time. In the end I learned a lot about the history of the major justices.
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- Jean
- 09-04-14
Interesting
I recently watched Jeffrey Rosen on T.V. interview various Supreme Court Justices and this trigger me to buy this book as it seemed somehow I had skipped over Rosen in my readings on the Supreme Court.
In his book “the Supreme Court” Jeffrey Rosen, an acclaimed observer of the Court, teaches law at George Washington University, argues that temperament trumps all. “Humility and common sense” he writes, more than “academic brilliance on rigid philosophical consistency” separates the truly influential justices from the other.
Rosen premise rests on four rivalries, each from a different period in the Court’s history, each pitting what he calls “pragmatic” personality against an “ideologue”. There are as follows:
1. John Marshall against Thomas Jefferson (Marshall’s greatest antagonist, was a President not a justice.)
2. John Marshall Harlan against Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
3. Hugo Black against William O. Douglass
4. William H. Rehnquist against Antonin Scalia
In the book Rosen goes into detail about each of these 4 sets of justices. Rosen’s book makes a less than convincing case that agreeability is the key to influence. Part of the problem is that Rosen’s neat dichotomy (pragmatist/ideologue) may not be neat enough. No more helpful than labels of liberal or conservative. Take for example Harlan and Black. Both appear by the author rendering, a lot like ideologues. Harlan the lone dissenter in Plessey v Ferguson (1896) ruling created the separate but equal. Black similarly is painted as a free speech absolutist. Rosen say Black’s pragmatism is his ability to bring his brethren around to his view point without budging much in the process. Rosen is right that this skill accounted for much of Black’s influence. But to suggest in Black’s case or in general that personal temperament matters more than intellect seems a stretch to me. “The self –centered loner” he writes “is less-effective than the convivial team player”. This view is not without merit. Rosen’s contrast between the churlish Scalia and the conciliatory Rehnquist makes the point effectively, even if the other chapters do not. In each case Rosen contends, the Justice who had the judicial temperament that includes pragmatism, common sense, trust and institutional loyalty such as Marshall, Harlan, Black and Rehnquist were able to more effectively shape American law.
Rosen blends biography with clear descriptions of legal cases that illustrate his point. The book ends with an interest recent interview with Chief Justice Roberts. The author points out that Roberts worked for Rehnquist as a clerk and sees Marshall as a model. If you are interested in history or the Supreme Court this is an interesting book to read. Alan Sklar did an excellent job narrating the book.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Anthony Freyberg
- 09-23-08
Ideas and Personalities - The Supreme Court's Best
This is a fascinating and well written narrative depicting the lives, philosophies and at times combative interactions of six of the greatest Supreme Court justices. Anyone new to US judicial history or, like myself, well versed in the subject, will surely fine this book insightful, thought provoking and highly entertaining.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- J. S. Koehler
- 05-06-07
A must for Court Watchers
Although Rosen's personal bias comes through at times, his perspective on the history of the United States Surpeme Court is interesting. If you are a "Court Watcher" you will find the last chapter on Rehnquist/Saclia and the epilogue with excerpts from an interview with the new CHief Justice particularly interesting. Historians will appreciate the earlier chapters.
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5 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Laura Brown
- 03-27-19
Dry
A bit too much of “just the dry facts’.
I would have preferred if they had given a bit more life to the different judges.
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