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

3930. A People's History of the Supreme Court, by Peter Irons (read Sept 6, 2004) This is a 1999 book which only goes up to 1994. I think it is designed for mainly non-lawyers, but I found it fun to read, though at times a bit superficial. Except on some social issues, I mostly agreed with the author's views. He is a particular student of the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, and his discussion of those distressing cases is on the money--and sobering to think of how readily show more the Bill of Rights was set aside in a time of popular prejudice. show less