Status
Available
Publication
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2013.
Description
Seven minutes after President Obama signed national health insurance into law, a lawyer in the office of Florida's Attorney General began a challenge that would eventually reach the nation's highest court. Health care is only the most visible and recent front in a battle over the meaning and scope of the U.S. Constitution. The battleground is the United States Supreme Court, and one of its most insightful and trenchant observers takes us close up. Marcia Coyle's inside account captures how those cases began and how they ultimately exposed the great divides among the justices. Most dramatically, her analysis shows how dedicated conservative lawyers and groups are strategizing to find cases and crafting them to bring to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. The Roberts Court offers a ringside seat at the struggle to lay down the law of the land.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member annbury
This book is a solid and thoughtful review of the workings of the Supreme Court since Roberts became Chief Justice, focussing on four critical cases involving affirmative action, gun control, campaign finance, and health care. The reporting is precise and goes deeply into the issues and
Show More
personalities involved, but it is accessible to a non-legal reader. I learned a lot about the way the Court works in reading it. Why four stars? Because I didn't find it as compelling a read as Toobin's work. By the end, I was feeling rather overwhelmed with legal detail. Still, I shall look forward to reading Ms. Coyle's future works. Show Less
LibraryThing member labdaddy4
A very cumbersome read. I really got bogged down with all the minute details. I enjoy listening to Ms Coyle's analysis on the PBS New Hour but this was just way too much. I guess a legal scholar or law student would find this appealing - but not just a news/current events junkie like me :(
LibraryThing member stevesmits
Marcia Coyle analyzes the jurisprudential shift in the Supreme Court starting with John Roberts’s arrival at the court as its new chief justice. She notes that the court has become significantly more conservative, perhaps the most marked reorientation in decades. She concludes that Roberts,
She suggests that it was the departure of Sandra Day O’Connor and her replacement by Samuel Alito that was the most impactful on the court’s close decisions. O’Connor was substantially a moderate who often sided with the liberal wing of justices in 5-4 decisions. Alito is a deeply conservative justice who can be relied on to uphold conservative viewpoints at every turn. Most important, O’Connor’s absence elevated Justice Arthur Kennedy to the “swing vote” place among the justices and he is more conservative in his holdings than was O’Connor. After a long period of stability the court has seen substantial turnover since 2005, but it clearly was Alito for O’Connor and the new swing role for Kennedy that has had the most impact.
To frame her analysis Coyle uses four areas in which the court has made landmark decisions: race, gun control, campaign financing and the health care. She describes in a balanced way the constitutional basis for the justices’ opinions, but concludes that the outcomes of the decisions were among the most radical restructuring of constitutional interpretations in the court’s history. She believes that the court, while not being per se more politically motivated than its predecessors, has altered the country’s political landscape in profound ways that will have deep impact on the fundamental relationships between the government and the people, between the government’s three branches and between the federal government and states.
Although these four areas are the basis for her book, she also includes other decisions reached by the court during this time. As the public’s attention is most focused on the big 5-4 decisions, it was interesting to note that in many more cases the court is not at all sharply divided in its votes. The common perception that the conservative and liberal wings of the court are intractably opposed to each other is not fully accurate
Coyle provides us with thoughtful analysis of the underlying judicial and constitutional philosophies of the court’s members. The viewpoints of the justices on the correct bases for constitutional interpretations are quite significantly disparate, but she recognizes that however much one might disagree with a justice’s underpinning perspective the justices deserve respect as each are deeply thoughtful and committed to the vital importance of the role of the court in our system of government.
She gives interesting insights into confirmation hearings of Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor and Kagan. She writes about the lawyers who will argue before the court and describes their intensive preparations of briefs and oral arguments.
These days there is a lot of sharp attention in the media, among politicians, scholars and the people to the import of the court’s viewpoints. The widening partisan divide in our national dialogue has contributed to greater scrutiny about the court and how it will affect the issues of the day. Coyle performs a useful task in taking us much more deeply into the thinking of the justices and the workings of the court.
Show More
despite his affirmation at confirmation hearings that he believes in narrow rulings with great respect for precedents, has not consistently followed this judicial path.She suggests that it was the departure of Sandra Day O’Connor and her replacement by Samuel Alito that was the most impactful on the court’s close decisions. O’Connor was substantially a moderate who often sided with the liberal wing of justices in 5-4 decisions. Alito is a deeply conservative justice who can be relied on to uphold conservative viewpoints at every turn. Most important, O’Connor’s absence elevated Justice Arthur Kennedy to the “swing vote” place among the justices and he is more conservative in his holdings than was O’Connor. After a long period of stability the court has seen substantial turnover since 2005, but it clearly was Alito for O’Connor and the new swing role for Kennedy that has had the most impact.
To frame her analysis Coyle uses four areas in which the court has made landmark decisions: race, gun control, campaign financing and the health care. She describes in a balanced way the constitutional basis for the justices’ opinions, but concludes that the outcomes of the decisions were among the most radical restructuring of constitutional interpretations in the court’s history. She believes that the court, while not being per se more politically motivated than its predecessors, has altered the country’s political landscape in profound ways that will have deep impact on the fundamental relationships between the government and the people, between the government’s three branches and between the federal government and states.
Although these four areas are the basis for her book, she also includes other decisions reached by the court during this time. As the public’s attention is most focused on the big 5-4 decisions, it was interesting to note that in many more cases the court is not at all sharply divided in its votes. The common perception that the conservative and liberal wings of the court are intractably opposed to each other is not fully accurate
Coyle provides us with thoughtful analysis of the underlying judicial and constitutional philosophies of the court’s members. The viewpoints of the justices on the correct bases for constitutional interpretations are quite significantly disparate, but she recognizes that however much one might disagree with a justice’s underpinning perspective the justices deserve respect as each are deeply thoughtful and committed to the vital importance of the role of the court in our system of government.
She gives interesting insights into confirmation hearings of Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor and Kagan. She writes about the lawyers who will argue before the court and describes their intensive preparations of briefs and oral arguments.
These days there is a lot of sharp attention in the media, among politicians, scholars and the people to the import of the court’s viewpoints. The widening partisan divide in our national dialogue has contributed to greater scrutiny about the court and how it will affect the issues of the day. Coyle performs a useful task in taking us much more deeply into the thinking of the justices and the workings of the court.
Show Less
Awards
American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award (Finalist — 2014)