Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court
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- Published by: Penguin Group, Inc.
- eBook Publish Date: January 22, 2007
- Print ISBN: 1594201013
- Filesize: 825.56 KB
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Overview
Drawing on unprecedented access to the Supreme Court justices and their inner circles, acclaimed ABC News legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg offers an explosive, newsbreaking account of one of the most momentous political watersheds in recent American history.
Over the past decade, the central front of America's bitter culture wars has been the titanic battle over the composition and direction of the United States Supreme Court. During that period, no journalist has been closer to the action on the ground-the ideas, the politics, the personalities, the gamesmanship-than ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg. Now, in Supreme Conflict, Greenburg draws on all of her formidable reportorial resources to give a brilliant, vivid, astonishingly unvarnished account of the struggle for the soul of the highest court in the land.
Greenburg picks up the plot with the Rehnquist Court, which, despite having seven Republican nominees, proved deeply disappointing to conservatives hoping to reverse decades of progressive rulings on key social issues. She reveals for the first time the real story behind a series of failed Republican nominations that enraged the American conservative movement and left it seething with frustration and resolve not to squander future opportunities. Enter: George W. Bush and the setting of the stage for a full-blown conservative counterrevolution. Supreme Conflict contains entirely fresh perspectives across the entire sweep of its story, from the conservative movement's early fumbles with the nominations of justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter to its crowning successes with the appointments of justices Roberts and Alito. The book breaks news in its revelations about the effect of Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness on the process; on the truth behind Harriet Miers's disastrous nomination and how it was really scuttled; and on how decades of bruising battles led to the triumph of the conservative agenda with the appointment of two of its leading judicial exponents. Through the entire dramatic story, rich in character and conflict, Greenburg never loses sight of the gargantuan stakes in this struggle, the opposing ideological agendas at play.
The story Jan Crawford Greenburg tells is that of the fulcrum event of our time, the massive coordinated campaign to move the Supreme Court in a very different direction, to a more limited and restrictive role in American government. A masterpiece of old-fashioned gumshoe reportage, rich storytelling, and penetrating analysis, Supreme Conflict will be the definitive account of the most consequential shift in the use of American judicial power in almost one hundred years.
Editorial Reviews
Los Angeles Times
You know the name 'Woodward,' as in Bob Woodward, whose insider-based accounts of Washington decision-making have been runaway bestsellers since Richard Nixon's downfall. Well, now you should remember the name Greenburg because ABC News reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg's account of what's been happening at the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years is the richest and most impressive journalistic look at the panel since Woodward co-wrote 'The Brethren' in 1979.
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
In a lively new book on the Supreme Court, the ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg argues that in one area President Bush has succeeded where his father, as well as Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, did not, achieving a longtime conservative goal: he has moved the Supreme Court decisively to the right and shaped its direction for the next three to four decades ... a fascinating look at the dynamics within the court.
-- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.
Author Information
Bio of Jan Crawford Greenburg
Jan Crawford Greenburg is a correspondent for ABC News who covers law and politics for World News Tonight, Nightline, and Good Morning America. She previously served as the Supreme Court analyst for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and Face the Nation on CBS and was the chief legal affairs writer for the Chicago Tribune. She has covered the Supreme Court for twelve years and has had extensive interviews with most of the nine justices. With high-level sources inside the White House, the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill, Greenburg has gained unique access to the leading players in the confirmation battles. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and has an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama.
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Additional Info
Imprint
Penguin Classics Hardcover
Filesize
825.56 KB
Number of Pages
368
eBook ISBN
9781429508643
Excerpt from: Supreme Conflict by Jan Crawford Greenburg
Sandra Day O'Connor was not a woman who sat still. She had grown up under big skies, surrounded by miles of open land, and she liked to get out and see things. In the fall of 2004, she readily agreed to travel to Ottawa with her old friend and colleague Bill Rehnquist to meet with judges on Canada's Supreme Court. Rehnquist invited another justice, Tony Kennedy, and together the group flew there in mid-October.
Rehnquist and his colleagues had just kicked off a new Supreme Court term that had reached a significant milestone. Over its history, the Court has welcomed a new justice on an average of about every two years. Rehnquist's current Court had worked together for a decade, the longest period nine justices had ever served together without a change in membership.
But as Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Kennedy left Washington, change seemed likely. The presidential election was weeks away. George W. Bush was fighting for his political life against a spirited challenge from Massachusetts senator John F. Kerry, with both the president and his challenger pointing to the closely divided Supreme Court to illustrate the campaign's high stakes. With two justices over eighty years of age and two others in their seventies, the next president could get one, two, or even three appointments. It seemed certain in those frantic final stages of the race that the winner of this election would shape the direction of the Court, and with it the country, for decades to come.
On a sunny fall Ottawa day, Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Kennedy spent their time meeting with their Canadian counterparts and touring some of the government buildings, including the Senate and House of Commons. After their official visits, O'Connor wanted to look around the picturesque capital. She was a woman in motion, and she liked to bring people along with her. Every year, O'Connor would take her law clerks on long outings around Washington's landmarks to make sure they didn't miss out, and she encouraged the women to join her aerobics class, which she had started at the Supreme Court just after her confirmation in 1981.
"Let's take a walk," O'Connor suggested to Rehnquist and Kennedy. Kennedy, who joined the Court seven years after O'Connor, was game. But Rehnquist declined. He wasn't feeling well, he said. He had a cold he couldn't shake, some kind of respiratory thing. It had been going on for a while.
Later that day, Kennedy told his wife, Mary, that he thought Rehnquist was unwell. Rehnquist suspected it too. He'd been more tired than usual, and his throat was scratchy. His voice wasn't the same. When he returned home from his Canadian meetings, he went to Bethesda National Naval Medical Center for tests. On Friday, October 22, doctors gave him the news: thyroid cancer, maybe six months.
The next day Rehnquist had surgery to insert a tube in his throat. The Court downplayed the illness, releasing a terse statement the following Monday that Rehnquist had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had undergone surgery. Rehnquist, the Court said, expected to be back on the bench the following week.
