 |
| The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court By Jeffrey Toobin Doubleday 369 pp., $27.95 |
In the chambers of the US Supreme Court
Jeffrey Toobin examines the nine personalities that sit on the nation's highest court
from the September 25, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Toobin writes: "Clinton told friends that the chief justice shook his hand and said, 'Good luck – you'll need it.' The president took the gesture as vaguely menacing."
Toobin goes on to criticize Justice John Paul Stevens's opinion in the Jones case upholding the "commendable principle" that no man is above the law. But Toobin says Stevens's opinion "showed a stunning naiveté about contemporary law and politics."
Stevens and his colleagues rejected Clinton's argument that the Jones suit should be put on hold because it would distract the president from his official duties. "It appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of [Clinton's] time," Stevens wrote. Toobin labels this "an epically incorrect prediction."
But what Toobin downplays is that much of the menace that emerged during Clinton's scandal-tainted second term was of the president's own making. No one on the high court, least of all Justice Stevens, could have imagined that Bill Clinton was about to give false testimony in the Jones suit to cover-up an ongoing sexual relationship with a White House intern, and that he would lie about it to a grand jury.
Supreme Court justices are sometimes considered infallible because they get the last word on what the law is, but there is nothing in that calculus that qualifies them as oracles of the sexual and legal escapades of our then commander in chief.
Toobin sprinkles bits of biographical information on the justices throughout "The Nine." Some appear directly relevant to their work on the Court (such as Justice Anthony Kennedy's passion for travel, which in Toobin's view, has ended up "transforming his tenure as a justice"), while others do not (Justice Samuel Alito's love of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, which led his fellow justices to invite the Phillie Phanatic, the team's mascot, to his welcoming dinner.)
But together these tidbits add interest, creating a portrait of the varied lives of these top jurists. Of the attractive, charismatic Chief Justice John Roberts, Toobin writes that he "was not genetically engineered to be a justice of the Supreme Court, but it often seemed that way."
Toobin recalls all the ugliness of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, and notes the lasting toll that seems to have taken on Thomas. He also reveals another side to the justice who – alone among his colleagues – made an effort to learn the names of the Court's cafeteria workers, clerks, and police officers. (Toobin also notes that Thomas is a NASCAR fan and an enthusiastic RV owner.)
RSS feed