The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right

April 25, 2016
Veteran Supreme Court reporter Greenhouse (Becoming Justice Blackmun) and Graetz (Death by a Thousand Cuts) have written a detailed, accessible revisionist history of Warren Burger’s tenure as chief justice from 1969 to 1986. As the authors’ introduction explains, the “received wisdom” about those 17 years has been that “nothing much happened.” They convincingly argue that the Supreme Court decisions rendered during that era paved the way for more recent conservative landmark decisions such as the highly controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling on campaign finance. Chapter after chapter recounts the gradual erosion of the doctrines of the prior, progressive
Earl Warren Court in virtually all areas
of American life; for instance, while the expansion of the rights that had been granted to criminal defendants (e.g., Miranda warnings) survived, they did so as facades, as Burger’s court drastically limited their effectiveness. This is the best kind of legal history: cogent, relevant, and timely, given the focus on the Court’s role and power after the death of Justice Scalia. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Strothman Agency.

March 15, 2016

Columbia Law School professor Graetz (The End of Energy) and New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning legal journalist Greenhouse (Becoming Justice Blackmun) combine expertise to provide an insightful and well-researched examination of the Burger Court, led by former chief justice Warren E. Burger (1907-95). This persuasive book emanates from seminars the authors taught at Yale and Columbia Law Schools, enhanced by observations of Columbia Law School faculty. The authors present a simple yet elegant thesis that challenges the conventional wisdom that the Burger Court merely "occupied a transitional role between the aggressively liberal Warren Court and the similarly aggressive conservatism of the Rehnquist Court." Accordingly, they unpack the implications of numerous Burger Court decisions, demonstrating that a great deal happened on the justice's watch. Thus, in five parts--Crime, Race, Social Transformation, Business, and the Presidency--they reveal the court's role in producing jurisprudence shaping the death penalty, voting rights, affirmative action, sex equality, expression and repression, religion, abortion, workplace inequality, and presidential power and abuse. VERDICT An excellent choice for aficionados of the Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's masterpiece, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. [See Prepub Alert, 12/21/15.]--Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., Morgantown

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