A View of the Supreme Court

In this post, I’m going to be a little self-indulgent. This past week saw the publication of a new book that I wrote with my friend, Anthony Champagne, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Tony and I served together as Supreme Court Fellows in 1990-91 and became lifelong friends. We discovered early on that we each had collected scores of anecdotes about the Supreme Court and its justices. We each deployed these stories in speeches and lectures, finding that audiences loved the tales. Eventually, we resolved to compile the stories in a book.

Last Monday, the book was published. It is called “Supreme Anecdotes: Tales from the Supreme Court.” Part of the reason for its lengthy gestation period is that we resolved to cover every justice to ever have served on the Court. That meant rifling through judicial biographies, law review articles, tributes, and a variety of other sources to cover even justice. Our original publisher became a victim of business failure during the pandemic. Once we found a new publisher, we needed to update our manuscript to cover some new appointees.

We are heartened by the reception the book has had. Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the Berkeley School of Law said he could not “think of another book on the Supreme Court that I enjoyed reading more or learned more from.” Former Texas chief justice Wallace Jefferson called it a “must read for all who care about the majesty and frailty of the rule of law.”

Political science professor James Riddlesperger, Jr. of Texas Christian University lauded its appreciation of the Court’s history, as well as “a chuckle a page.” Research professor Royce Hanson of the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy enjoyed the peek it gave at the “foibles, follies, and occasional withering wit of the Supremes.” And Alan Morrison, associate dean at George Washington University, wrote that it “gives the reader a very different side of the Justices, including the fact that many of them did not come close to fitting our ideal of members of the Highest Court.

Certainly, the book tells many funny stories about the Court over the years and that is enjoyable in its own right. Still, it also highlights the ways the Court has changed since its early days – and the ways in which it remains very much the same. I hope that readers of this blog find it useful, as well as an enjoyable romp through Supreme Court history.