Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court | 
| Author: Jan Crawford Greenburg
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 70558
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
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Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143113046
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9780143113041
ASIN: 0143113046
Publication Date: January 29, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
With its closed chambers and formal language, the Supreme Court tends to deflect drama away from its vastly powerful proceedings. But its mysteries hold plenty of intrigue for anyone with the access to uncover them. In Supreme Conflict, Jan Crawford Greenburg has that access, and then some. With high-placed sourcing that would make Bob Woodward proud, she tells the story of the Court's recent decades and of the often-thwarted attempts by three conservative presidents to remake the Court in their image. Among the revelations are the surprising influence of the most-maligned justice, Clarence Thomas, and the political impact of personal relations among these nine very human colleagues-for-life. Written for everyday readers rather than legal scholars, her account sidesteps theoretical subtleties for a compelling story of the personalities who breathe life into our laws. --Tom Nissley Crawford graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, and was a legal affairs reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Supreme Court correspondent for PBS's NewsHour before becoming the legal correspondent for ABC News. We had the chance to ask her a few questions about Supreme Conflict: Questions for Jan Crawford Greenburg  Amazon.com: How hard was it to get the access to justices and clerks that you had for this book? Does the culture of the Court promote that kind of openness about their deliberations? Jan Crawford Greenburg: Hard! And let me tell you it took some time--they weren't flinging open the doors of their chambers for the first few years I was covering the Court. It takes awhile to build relationships and trust, and I was fortunate enough to do that during the dozen years I've been covering the Supreme Court. As for openness, I think the culture of the Court instead promotes anonymity and privacy. The justices aren't like the people across the street in Congress, or down Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House. They don't hold press conferences or solicit media coverage of their views. They speak through their opinions. I was fortunate that they also chose to speak with me for this important book about the direction of the Supreme Court and its role in our lives. Amazon.com: Harry Blackmun's notes must be a treasure chest for Court historians. Could you describe what you found there? Greenburg: A treasure chest is an understatement. Harry Blackmun took extraordinarily detailed notes--almost breathtaking in their scope and level of detail. (He would even write down what lawyers were wearing when they'd appear in Court to argue a case.) He recorded the justices' comments during their private conferences--when they discuss cases--and he took down their votes. And he kept all the key memos and letters that the justices would send back and forth when they were discussing a case. It was a tremendous window into the Court's inner sanctum, during some of the most pivotal years for the institution. Amazon.com: One of the biggest revelations of your book is your characterization of Clarence Thomas as far more influential, even in his first year on the Court, than he's usually given credit for. Could you describe what his role on the Court has been? Greenburg: Clarence Thomas has been the most maligned justice in modern history--and also the most misunderstood and mischaracterized. I found conclusive evidence that far from being Antonin Scalia's intellectual understudy, Thomas has had a substantial role in shaping the direction of the Court--from his very first week on the bench. The early storyline on Thomas was that he was just following Scalia's direction, or as one columnist at the time wrote, "Thomas Walks in Scalia's Shoes." That is patently false, as the documents and notes in the Blackmun papers unquestionably show. If any justice was changing his vote to join the other that first year, it was Scalia joining Thomas, not the other way around. But his clear and forceful views affected the Court in unexpected ways. Although he shored up conservative positions, his opinions also caused moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to back away and join the justices on the Left. Amazon.com: Not every Supreme Court confirmation is a battle, even when the Senate and the President are from different parties. What separates the candidates who sail through from the ones who get put through the wringer? Greenburg: The recent appointment of Samuel Alito shows a justice with a clearly conservative record can get confirmed--and even pick up some votes from Democrats. Maybe the secret is developing a reputation as a fair and nonpartisan judge on a federal appeals court. At his hearings, liberal and conservative judges who had worked with him on the appeals court testified in his behalf, as did his law clerks--some of whom were self-identified liberals. Alito was the conservative counterpart to Clinton nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She had been an outspoken advocate for liberal causes (including the ACLU), but she'd developed a reputation as a fair and thoughtful judge on the federal appeals court, garnering respect from both sides. Amazon.com: How much do Americans know about how their federal courts work? What should they know? Greenburg: Most Americans, understandably, think about trials and drama when the issue of the courts is raised. But the appeals courts--and the Supreme Court--remain mysterious, even though those courts have an enormous impact on American life. The judiciary is one of the three branches of government, but its decisions take on outsized importance at times. It can provide a vital check against abuse of individual rights by government--but it also can usurp the role of the people when it reaches out and takes on issues that more appropriately belong in the purview of the other branches. Amazon.com: Even though you show how our expectations for where new members will take the Court are so often wrong, I'll ask you anyway: What do you expect in the next few years from the Roberts Court? Greenburg: To be more conservative than the one led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. John Roberts himself is a solid judicial conservative who believes the Court has too often taken on issues that belong in the realm of elected legislatures. He is advocating a more restrained approach, with greater consensus among the justices. In addition, Justice Alito replaced key swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor, the Court's first female justice. O'Connor's vote often carried the day on the closely divided Court--and she typically sided with liberals on social issues like abortion, affirmative action, and religion. Alito is more conservative, and I expect to see the Court turn to the right on those and other issues.
Product Description
Drawing on unprecedented acc ess to the Supreme Court justices themselves and their inner circles, acclaimed ABC News legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg offers an explosive newsbreaking account of one of the most momentous political watersheds in American history. From the series of Republican nominations that proved deeply frustrating to conservatives to the decades of bruising battles that led to the rise of Justices Roberts and Alito, this is the authoritative story of the conservative effort to shift the direction of the high court a revelatory look at one of the central fronts of America s culture wars by one of the most widely respected experts on the subject.
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 One of the Most Important Books on the Supreme Court Ever January 30, 2007
Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA)
68 out of 80 found this review helpful
This is just a terrific book on the recent Supreme Court. The author, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, currently is a correspondent for ABC News, and for many years covered the Court for the Chicago Tribune. The author develops a dual focus in her analysis. First, she looks at how certain key Justices were selected for nomination to the Court. Those Justices include Souter, Kennedy, Thomas, O'Connor, Scalia, Miers, Roberts and Alito. She also covers the Bork nomination. Particularly interesting in this regard, and the "struggle for control" of the Court she sees continually occurring, is the conservative paranoia that true believer conservatives only must be nominated by GOP Presidents, individuals who will unlike Souter, Blackmun, Kennedy, and O'Connor for example, never deviate from a firm conservative outlook no matter what seductive influences (such as the New York Times and the Georgetown cocktail circuit)impact upon them. The author well documents that the Federalist Society and other judicial conservative groups felt themselves continually betrayed as one after another Justice moved to a more moderate position despite having appeared to be a firmly-fixed Scalia/Thomas type conservative. The internal struggle in GOP White Houses with these groups and the process of selection itself are superbly discussed, based primarily it appears upon the author's extensive interviewing, the Blackmun papers, and documentation at various Presidential libraries (especially the Reagan facility).
The second focus of the book is equally fascinating. Here the author analyzes the struggle within the Court for dominance, the process of coalition building, the strategies of inter-Justice persuasion, and the role of Justice personality in the mix. Some very interesting suggestions emerge from this analysis. For example, Justice Thomas joining the Court had a critical impact in that his staunch conservatism moved Justice O'Connor toward the middle from her previously more conservative position due to her disagreements with him. Much like Joan Biskupic in her excellent biography of the Justice (also reviewed on Amazon), the author analyzes O'Connor's techniques of coalition building and how she adopted fluid and flexible tests in concurrences that would allow her to maximize her position as a "swing" justice. We also come to understand why Justice Kennedy has developed the reputation for being indecisive and in the habit of switching sides at the last minute. Some interesting background analysis of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito is included. But there is much more of great interest to digest in the author's incisive analysis of these intra-Court dynamics.
The book is based on solid research, but is not "academic" in that the author cites relatively few law review articles in her notes. One senses her solid grasp of the topic comes from extensive contact with the key players and a profound understanding of the processes involved in selection, more than from extensive published sources. If you are interested in the Supreme Court and American politics, this is a book that will "wow" you with its insights and perceptive analysis.
Enormously informative but with some significant flaws February 6, 2007
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
49 out of 91 found this review helpful
Jan Crawford Greenburg's new book on the Supreme Court is getting a number of very positive reviews and based on the huge amount of new material that she presents, the book is deserving of much of the praise that it has received. It is a must-read by any standard. Although I would still rate Woodward's classic THE BRETHREN as the finest popular exploration of the inner workings of the Supreme Court, this rates a very close second. I learned a great deal about several of the justices, though it is important to note that some play a much smaller role than one might expect. Scalia, for instance, is less prominent in it than O'Connor, Kennedy, or Thomas, while Breyer and Souter are barely in it at all apart from a discussion of their nominations. Greenburg has clearly been granted almost unprecedented access to not only retired but also sitting justices, as well as the papers of Harry Blackmun. The book represents as close to a close-up view of the court as most of us are likely ever to be granted.
I am, however, somewhat disturbed by the failure of reviewers to note a few troubling aspects of the book. There are some flaws of omission and one major flaw of perspective. Let me address the latter first. Throughout the book Greenburg uses the language of one or another justice "moving to the Left" or becoming more liberal. This is not only not terribly helpful but can be downright misleading. Let me give an example of what I mean. Take the positions on Jews espoused by Hitler and Mussolini, two famous figures of the extreme right. If someone were to start off adhering to Hitler's version of fascism, with its emphasis on what we today would call the genetic depravity of the Jew (Hitler spoke of "blood"), but move gradually to Mussolini's view that Judaism was more of a depraved mode of thought and not tied to genetics, one could be said to be moving to the Left. Moving to the Left hardly makes one a liberal or a leftist, however, just as moving to the right hardly makes one a conservative. Someone ceasing to agree with Noam Chomsky and moving to a position close to that of John Rawls has hardly become a conservative. But Greenburg constantly talks of justices moving to the left. This is, I would argue, simply mistaken. In fact, the justices are moving to the middle. Anthony Kennedy has never become a liberal. Federalist Society members may have been disappointed that he has not adhered to principles or positions they approve in every case, but under no stretch of the imagination could he be described as a liberal or even a moderate. And while she describes the Rehnquist court as moving to the left in many ways, this simply misrepresents the fact that it was an intensely conservative court. It may have disappointed many on the Right hoping for a transformation of its social decisions, but on many other matters--for instance, employer-employee relations--it was a startling conservative court. But these distinctions were ignored in the book and from the first page to the last Greenburg goes on and on about justices moving to the left, whereas what they were really doing could be far more accurately described as moving to the center. Not one justice in the period covered by this book actually ended up on the left, even if she persists in describing them as moving in that direction.
There were also a number of factual errors, the most astonishing one being that the Gore v. Bush decision did not affect the outcome of the election. This is made more amazing by O'Connor's comments stating this same thing. Greenburg attended the University of Chicago Law School. Just a short walk away from the law school on the Midway is the NORC, which was charged with a close inspection of the ballots from Florida. When their examination was finished and their results published, the overwhelming majority of news organizations misreported the story. No doubt this was O'Connor's source in believing that they did not affect the outcome. It is true that Bush would have won in 2000 if the kind of recount that the Gore campaign was requesting had been undertaken. But that was not what the NORC reported. They indicated that under a number of possible scenarios, Gore would have won under ANY recount EXCEPT the kind that Gore was requesting. Finally, in a story that was broken by Michael Isikoff (hardly a friend of the left) in NEWSWEEK, the Florida judge who would have established the form of the recount had already decided to reject the limited recount requested by the Gore campaign but instead order a far more encompassing one. And on that recount, Gore would have won comfortably. That Greenburg failed to bring this up is remarkable. The brute fact is that stopping the recount the justices did indeed alter the outcome of the 2000 election, giving the presidency to Bush when a recount would have given it to Gore.
Another large gap in the book was the complete omission of any discussion of the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. This is important for several reasons. Most people are aware of the allegations of Anita Hill made against her former boss Clarence Thomas. The confirmation hearings got quite tawdry as Hill reported Thomas frequently discussed the contents of pornographic movies with her that he obviously must have seen. Thomas did not directly deny the content of Hill's charges, but instead displayed great wrath at their being raised at all. Later, then right-wing hit man David Brock wrote a scathing attack on Hill entitled THE REAL ANITA HILL, which contained the now-famous phrase that she was "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." In writing the book Brock interviewed a number of conservative figures, including Judge Laurence Silberman, who is mentioned by Greenburg at several points. Not one person familiar with Thomas told Brock that there was any substance in Hill's claims. However, later, when a book by other journalists largely substantiated Hill's claims and even interviewed individuals who had direct knowledge of Thomas's video rental history, Brock reopened his investigation into the matter. He discovered that many people who knew that Hill's allegations were accurate failed to mention that fact to him. He notes it as one of the events that began his move away from the right and to the left (and in this case, it wasn't a movement merely in that direction, like the ones Greenburg ascribes to the justices, but an actual change of political position--today Brock heads the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters). With substantial evidence that Hill's testimony was in fact accurate, there is simply no way in 2005 that Bush could under any circumstances have nominated Thomas to be Chief Justice. Instead, Greenburg simply ignores all the controversy surrounding Thomas's confirmation hearings.
Yet another significant omission was the failure to note that while Judicial Committee Democrats had blocked the nomination of several of Bush's more controversial court appointees, the Republican dominated committee had refused to confirm or even consider the confirmation of a vastly largely number of Clinton appointees during his two terms, at a ratio of about ten to one. The difference is that Democrats were in the minority from 2001 until 2007, but the point still stands that they allowed far more of Bush's nominees to go forward than the Republicans had Clinton's.
A previous reviewer stated that they couldn't tell if Greenburg were liberal or conservative. She seems to me to be solidly to the right of moderate, though she certainly is not a hardcore conservative. Simply the language used to describe figures such as David Souter shows this. At no point does she state that from any perspective that he had been a great judge or a strong selection. Instead, she frequently characterizes his choice as "terrible" and describes his nomination as a blunder. Granted, she articulates this in a way to indicate that this is the way that conservatives would view it, not counting herself among them, but there is simply no balance in her descriptions. Souter is almost always described in a negative, non-neutral manner. And while she writes frequently about how the Rehnquist court disappointed conservatives, she seems to imply that liberals had much to rejoice about.
But I don't want this to sound like this is not a good book. It is. But it is definitely not a great one and I believe that as people begin to discuss the book several of its fundamental flaws will be more obvious. As I said, it is a must-read book simply for the huge amount of detail about the justices. I treasure many passages such as the one where she indicates that Justice Stevens is so independent that he will not allow anyone to assist him in putting on his robe, unlike every other justice. She is at her best when bringing the individual justices alive as individuals, with wonderfully human quirks and foibles and habits and passions. She is also good at demonstrating many of the dilemmas the court represents for the political right.
My recommendation is for anyone interested in the Supreme Court to read this book. But I also recommend taking her overall analysis with great caution.
An outstanding journalistic account July 9, 2007
Jonathan Groner (Silver Spring, MD)
34 out of 38 found this review helpful
I read this book practically in one sitting -- which is saying something for a book about the last twenty years of the Supreme Court. I have some vocational and avocational interest in the subject: as a journalist, I covered many of the judicial nomination battles of the first George W. Bush term, though (as Greenburg points out) there were no Supreme Court nominations then. So, in the course of my work, I met some of the key players in Greenburg's account (including John Roberts when he was nominated the first time, for the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C.) and I think Greenburg has gotten everything right. And she does as good a job as anyone in explaining the chief mystery of the last couple of decades: how a Court with seven appointees of GOP Presidents could be as moderate as it was.
I see little or no evidence of political bias, left or right, in Greenburg's book. Her references to Justice David Souter as a disappointment and an example of poor staff work are clearly stated from the perspective of conservative activists, not necessarily as reflecting the author's views. In addition, Greenburg stays clear of another, subtler form of journalistic bias -- a bias in favor of people whom she knows and who have cooperated with her. Example: Greenburg clearly likes and admires Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and benefited from a lengthy interview with the retired Justice. However, she does not shy away from expressing a (well-deserved) criticism of Justice O'Connor -- that the Justice had no consistent vision of the law and decided cases one by one, almost by instinct and out of a vague sense of what would be "just."
This book is hard to put down, and one need not be a Supreme Court "junkie" to feel that way.
Excellent inside look at the current Supreme Court! January 24, 2007
Matthew A. Carr
33 out of 39 found this review helpful
I just bought the book and finished it in a day. Greenburg has really done a very fine job providing a fascinating account of the Rehnquist and (so soon!) Roberts Courts. I won't spoil anything, but there is a lot of information previously undisclosed regarding the circumstances of O'Connor's and Rehnquist's retirements, the search for replacements, and the nominations of Roberts, Miers, and Alito. There are also segments dedicated to the other justices, and some interesting remarks on Bush v. Gore from Justices O'Connor and Kennedy.
Importantly, Greenburg has no discernable bias or agenda, and people of all political stripes will enjoy it. (Though conservatives may revel in the narrative a bit more given that they're the ones who have made progress on the court in the last year and a half with the coming of Roberts and Alito).
The best inside account of the Court since Woodward's famed "The Brethren." Greenburg's book does not focus extensively on legal doctrine, but instead looks at the political forces that shape the Court.
 Stenography without Context or Analysis July 24, 2007
Leo Klein
28 out of 51 found this review helpful
This book should really be called, "Conservatives Take Over Supreme Court -- In Their Own Words". The author shows no interest or even awareness of other points of view.
Her description of the Bork/Ginsburg nomination fiasco comes almost directly from members of the Reagan Administration with absolutely no other interpretation or context.
Her (completely inadequate) treatment of Justice Thomas as someone who's just been "misunderstood" -- otherwise totally ignoring the truly radical nature of his judicial perspective is yet another glaring example. Her description of the Alito nomination reads like an abbreviated soap-opera pitting "folksy" Samuel against the "openly hostile" Democratic Senators.
The book ends on a paean to George W. Bush who the author attributes as the mastermind of this judicial lurch to the right.
There literally is no other point of view or perspective. Democrats or liberal groups are no where to be seen -- other than in fleeting one-liners about "interest groups". Even the Clinton Administration which lasted two terms and saw two nominees to the Supreme Court merits a measly 18 pages.
Instead what we get are detailed interviews with people from the Federalist Society, etc., with zero context as to where these groups fit on the political spectrum.
The author uncritically accepts the conservatives on their own terms, repeating ad nauseum their desire for "judicial restraint" and original intent as if no other, perhaps less flattering, interpretation existed.
I appreciate the perspective of all sides on these issues (even if I don't agree with them) but we really need an author who's a bit more honest in describing political context. To reduce everything to cat-fights and personality clashes -- as this book does -- borders on flagrant deception.
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