The Nine
Ratings17
Average rating3.9
Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important--and secret--legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.Just in time for the 2008 presidential election--where the future of the Court will be at stake--Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of conservative disgust with the Court have finally produced a conservative majority, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, presidential power, and church-state relations.Based on exclusive interviews with justices themselves, The Nine tells the story of the Court through personalities--from Anthony Kennedy's overwhelming sense of self-importance to Clarence Thomas's well-tended grievances against his critics to David Souter's odd nineteenth-century lifestyle. There is also, for the first time, the full behind-the-scenes story of Bush v. Gore--and Sandra Day O'Connor's fateful breach with George W. Bush, the president she helped place in office. The Nine is the book bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin was born to write. A CNN senior legal analyst and New Yorker staff writer, no one is more superbly qualified to profile the nine justices.
Tags
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
This a fantastic inside look at the personalities and ideologies at work on the supreme court. A must read any politics junkie!
I guess I was in the mood to read about the inner workings of our government. I couldn't put this book down. The Nine is the story of the Supreme Court justices who have served on the court in the last twenty years. The brightest minds and most thoughtful judges in the country are not always chosen. Instead, wisdom is sacrified for political opinion.
I was most aghast at Clarence Thomas. He rarely speaks and often votes alone, as he tends to hold opinions held by almost no one else. Not only that, but he repudiates the very system, racial quotas, that got him where he is today.
I was most taken with the story of Sandra Day O'Connor who went from being a nobody judge with strikingly conservative opinions to a moderate who listened to the voice of the American people when trying to make a decision.
One of my favorite reads of the year.
Insightful, eye-opening, revealing, fascinating. I gained newfound respect for some then-contemporary justices, in particular Sandra Day O'Connor, although at the end, the discussion of the Gore - Bush election decision was nearly shocking and very disappointing, as unworthy of an otherwise pretty laudable institution, in which most of the justices grow into something more than they started. Hopefully this will continue. I understood that the book is very much through Toobin's eyes, but he is quite even-handed and his research seemed impeccable.
