Peter Irons

We begin, as they say, from the beginning. The year is 1787 and the controversies of the day are slavery and racial segregation, free speech and a woman's right to end her pregnancy. Aren't we still battling against racial discrimination? Aren't we still fighting for free speech and women's rights? It is disheartening to think we have been railing against crooked judges since the beginning of the Supreme Court. Its inception had a rocky start. Rutledge was deranged and Wilson was jailed for show more debt, just to name a few examples. It makes you realize the abuse of power really is timeless. McKinley was able to place a brilliant conservative justice with an incompetent one. Fear and intimidation has not changed. Since the beginning of the Supreme Court there have been men who serve as chief justice who cannot separate personal bias from judicial duty.
On the other hand, time marches on and some things do change. At the time of writing, Irons's world consisted of a Supreme Court that had been mostly all white and mostly all old men. We have made some strides to having a diversified Supreme Court. So...there is that. Also, consider this: in the 1920's a woman had her own minimum wage.
I could go on and on. Last comment:Even though this is geared towards a tenth grade reader, it is an important book. Everyone should take a stab at it. If not to see where we are going, but to see where we have been. show less

This book is a fairly good telling of the stories of several major First Amendment cases. All of them are big name cases that have been detailed many times, but he does include a few details that I haven't seen in other works on this topic. The problem comes with the style of the book. He is smugly self-confident that he has taken the most appropriate tack - the middle ground, as though it is never possible for one of two competing sides to be completely right (this is in spite of the fact show more that he was a party to one of the cases detailed here). In order to maintain this image, he has to leave out a lot - such as letting stand all comments that leave the impression that school children have been denied the right to pray in school. He constantly touts how nice these people are, how sincere, and how much they have principles, as if nice people can never be horribly wrong about something, or as if being nice people means everything you ever do is done with total niceness in your heart. The only place he loses that veneer is when talking about plaintiffs Philip Paulson and Michael Newdow - the atheists that brought crucial cases to the Supreme Court. He makes sure to lay every perceived flaw out before the reader in a sort of "I report, you decide" manner. In fact, he apparently regards atheists as being somewhat lesser human beings, though his understanding of the First Amendment means he won't totally reject their right to bring the cases. He continually dismisses them as "only a handful of people" even while recognizing the rights of Jews, Muslims, and other minorities (some of them much smaller than non-believers in number) to have their rights protected in spite of their small numbers. He also leaves no room for the middle ground he seems to propose, since he brands people who want to take the religious symbols out of public spaces and have them displayed in private spaces like homes, churches and businesses (the true middle ground) as the extreme, not recognizing that the true opposite to people who want religious symbols demonstrated everywhere would be those who reject having them seen anywhere. Overall, I think the good of the book does not outweigh the negatives, especially since all of these cases have been discussed in much detail elsewhere. show less

Peter Irons is anathema to Chief Justice Rehnquist, for Irons is the person who discovered the audiotapes [b:May it Please the Court|556611|May It Please the Court Live Recordings and Transcripts of the Supreme Court in Session With Cassette |Peter H. Irons|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223662901s/556611.jpg|543803] made during Supreme Court pleadings, edited them and released them to the public. They make fascinating listening. It is just amazing to hear Thurgood Marshall responding to show more questions put to him by the justices in Brown v. Board of Education. Probably no two justices had less in common judicially than William Brennan and William Rehnquist. The duels between them are explained and set in context by Peter Irons in his study of several hundred cases. In only two did Rehnquist and Brennan agree.

All of the cases but seven related to conflict between government and the individual. Brennan voted against the government in each; Rehnquist always voted for the state. Irons summarizes the philosophy of each justice. Brennan constantly referred to the dignity of the individual; Rehnquist rarely did, instead applying the term “deference'” when discussing the relationship of the individual to the majority represented by the state. Brennan’s training as a Catholic and his exposure to the “social gospel” of the church explain his devotion to “justice and fair play and simple human dignity.” He linked the Declaration of Independence to “God-given inalienable rights” that stemmed from the truth of Christian faith. Freedom from the “absolute state” was the message he learned from his religious training. The Due Process clause of the fifth amendment as applied by the fourteenth was designed to limit governmental authority and to protect “life, liberty, and property.” The American Revolution represented a rejection of the prevailing assumptions of colonial social hierarchy, which provided governmental officials a great deal of arbitrary authority unchecked by law. Brennan also believed the role of the court and the Constitution was to protect minorities. The Borkian position that all substantive matters could be solved by a majoritarian process was not valid, argued Brennan. The principle of majority could not “rectify claims of minority right that arise as a response to the outcomes of that very majoritarian process.” He decried the “facile historicism” of conservatives, especially Attorney General Meese, who insisted that the meaning of “due process” was frozen in 1787. That position “establishes a presumption of resolving textual ambiguities against the claim of constitutional right,” and “turn[s:] a blind eye to social progress [and displays:] antipathy to claims of the minority to rights against the majority.” Rehnquist consistently applied a standard that was unabashedly majoritarian. The individual was subservient to the majority, and civil disobedience in support of any moral position was wrong. He had argued since his law school days that no moral position can be supported rationally. “Neither idealism of purpose nor self-proclaimed moral superiority on the part of the minority qualifies in the slightest way its obligation to obey the law,” he said.

An analysis of votes in more than 1200 votes and 164 signed opinions reveals that his votes were guided by the following three principles: the individual loses in a conflict with the state; conflicts between state and federal government were always resolved in favor of the state level; and lower level courts should always have jurisdiction when in conflict with federal courts. The role of the government is to enforce the will of the majority, by force if necessary. It’s ironic that Rehnquist, labeled a conservative, would promote the interests of the state while Brennan, the liberal, consistently sided with the rights of the individual against the state monolith. But that’s the problem with labels. show less

Great history here, with transcripts (including narrator) of abridged court proceedings backed up by audio cassettes.

It forces me to consider my opinion and how it aligns or not with the court decisions (I found I agree much more with this august body than I would have guessed):

Cases included:

Gideon v. Wainwright(right to counsel)
I AGREE that states are required under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to show more afford to pay their own attorneys.

Abington School District v. Schempp (school prayer)
I AGREE that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional.

Miranda v. Arizona (“the right to remain silent”)
I AGREE that arrested people should be "mirandized" and am glad the fiend miranda didn't avoid decades of sentence due to this case.

Roe v. Wade (abortion rights)
I AGREE with a women's right to choose and feel comfortable with the trimester-based direction of the court. I also always felt this was more on an enlarged idea of constitutional protection of "privacy" but see it is more on the fact that the born mother is the whose liberty is protected by the constitution.

Edwards v. Aguillard (teaching “creationism”)
I AGREE that the Louisiana law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public schools, creation science must also be taught, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion.

Regents v. Bakke (reverse discrimination)
Difficult. I DISAGREE that "affirmative action" that race should be one of several factors in college admission policy-where federal funds are accepted. I AGREE that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, are impermissible.

Wisconsin v. Yoder (compulsory schooling for the Amish)
I DISAGREE that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. Compulsory education for individual and societal good should not, IMHO, be second to denomination.

Tinker v. Des Moines (Vietnam protest in schools)
I AGREE that the First Amendment applies to public schools, and that administrators should have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom.

Texas v. Johnson (flag burning)
I AGREE with invalidating state prohibitions on desecrating the American flag, thought I think protestors taking such a route are being more provocative than articulate.

New York Times v. United States (Pentagon Papers)
I AGREE that the First Amendment did protect the right of The New York Times to print the Pentagon Papers materials. (However, I do think later WikiLeaks and other episodes of vomiting volumes of data out to the world went too far. Have any of those made it to the Supreme Court?)

Cox v. Louisiana (civil rights demonstrations)
I AGREE that a state government cannot employ "breach of the peace" statutes against protesters engaging in peaceable demonstrations that may potentially incite violence.

Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board (freedom of association)
I AGREE with the Supreme Court's first decision against the Board, though it was a dodge of the issues. I DISAGREE with the Supreme Court's second decision that upheld the constitutionality of the Act's registration requirements.

Terry v. Ohio (“stop and frisk” by police)
Especially difficult these days of so many reports of police abuse, but I AGREE that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous."

Gregg v. Georgia (capital punishment)
I DISAGREE with the use of the death penalty in the United States. I don’t think we need it. This is a difficult one as I feel we have such a free society, dangerous individuals have greater opportunity to use that free climate to become predators.

Cooper v. Aaron (Little Rock school desegregation)
I AGREE that the states are bound by the Court's decisions and must enforce them even if the states disagreed with them. (This was the issue not desegregation itself.)

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (public accommodations)
I AGREE that public accommodations must be desegregated.

Palmer v. Thompson (swimming pool integration)
I AGREE that a municipality may close their pools if they are not grown up enough to administer them as integrated facilities.

Loving v. Virginia (interracial marriage)
I AGREE marriage should be race-blind. (Great case name, BTW)

San Antonio v. Rodriguez (equal funding for public schools)
I DISAGREE that the constitution does not compel states to offer equally funded public education institutions to its citizens.

Bowers v. Hardwick (homosexual rights)
I DISAGREE that consensual sex acts between adults can be illegal.

Baker v. Carr (“one person, one vote”)
I AGREE that redistricting (attempts to change the way voting districts are delineated) issues present justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide redistricting cases.

United States v. Nixon (Watergate tapes)
I AGREE with the unanimous 8–0 ruling against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver presidential tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to the District Court.

DeShaney v. Winnebago County (child abuse)
This was an ugly and difficult case. I DISAGREE that, in this case, this state government agency's failure to prevent child abuse by a custodial parent did not violate the child's right to liberty. show less