Product Description

The year 2009 should bring extraordinary changes to the United States Supreme Court. Justice John Paul Stevens is expected to retire, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg may well follow suit. With a new president choosing their replacements, it's the perfect time for Secret Lives of the Supreme Court—an irreverent look at the lives, personalities, and history of this exclusive club, with profiles of everyone from John Jay and William Howard Taft to Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts. Readers will learn about their most important cases and their most bizarre personality quirks: Thurgood Marshall was a soap opera junkie, Benjamin Cordozo died a virgin, Hugo Black was a Klansman, Sandra Day O'Connor started a Jazzercise class for fellow lawyers, and much more. Complete with 35 irreverent portraits, Secret Lives of the Supreme Court will be a hit with U.S. history buffs and anyone seeking a fuller understanding of current events.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #189177 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781594743085
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Robert Schnakenberg is the author of Secret Lives of Great Authors and several other nonfiction books. He lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

SCOTUS - According to People & Natl Enquirer
Secret Lives of the Supreme Court: What Your Teachers Never Told You About America's Legendary Justices
The subtitle of what is basically another waste for downing hundreds of trees to form into a 288 page book is "What Your Teachers Never Told You About America's Legendary Justices".
Of all the information (and conjecture) a teacher can offer his or her students about the justices of the US Supreme Court the kind offered in Mr Schnakenberg's goes under the heading 'Useless tidbits holding no particular value other than gossip and bathroom humor'.

After reading this tome does one get into the reasoning (or emotion) why this justice viewed a case one way or the other? No.
Does Mr Schnakenberg's 'fact' that Mr Justice Holmes "was impotent and had a strictly platonic relationship with his wife, Fanny [Dixwell Holmes]" (p. 41) give us insight behind one of the famous jurist's aphorisms, "If my country wants to go to Hell, I am here to help it" (p. 40) or what is behind "Leany" Holmes's distrust of the idea of equality ("I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy" (p. 46) , true as that might seem)? No.

I was gifted this little book because the donor knew me as a SCOTUS historian and thought it might add some levity to my heavy reading and study, but whilst taking a couple of hours out to lick through these pages I noticed the information provided nothing to my knowledge of these justices. [Just after this brief 'review' my copy will be donated to a local charity's flea-market efforts, with the approval of its original donor.]

All of that said, if one desires to spend an hour reading an 'under-the-bench' history of this (sometimes) august legal chamber I am sure the contents of "Secret Lives" of the SCrt will either tickle some funny bone or raise the ire of some justice's ardent defender. [The author really lays into my favorite justice, who is not Holmes, by the way.] If you like getting your information about the Court from People Magazine or The National Enquirer then this book is just what the doctor ordered (or pick it up a local flea-market). It is the kind of information that one would bring up at a cocktail party and you could springboard a conversation by offering up: 'Did you know that Truman called his choice for the SCrt bench, Tom Clark (1949-61, associate justice), "such a dumb son of a bitch"?' (p. 139)

3-Stars because it offers what it says it will offer; I took off 2-Stars because his research is generic-based, though commendable in a couple instances.