58 pages • 1 hour read
Jeffrey ToobinThe Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Court: From Liberal to Conservative
This is the main theme of the book. Toobin gives an overview of how this happened, starting with the Reagan revolution begun with his election as president in 1980. Some people saw an overwhelming liberal slant to the Supreme Court under Chief Justices Earl Warren and Warren Burger, as well as to law schools throughout the country, and decided to try to establish a conservative legal movement. In 1982, some law students founded the Federalist Society to work for their cause. By 1991, eight of the nine justices had been appointed by Republican Presidents. However, they did not always vote the way strong conservatives wanted. Still, the 1990s saw a rightward shift at the Court overall, until the last year of the decade. From 1999 to 2005, there was a shift back to the left as international law began to have an impact on some of the justices and there was some pushback to the Bush administration’s encroachment on judicial power. After 2005, with the appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Court, the conservatives were in firm control.
Sandra Day O’Connor
Toobin writes that the Court was as much the “O’Connor Court” (38) as it was the Rehnquist Court during the period the book covers. O’Connor was an important swing vote on many issues, and her views—particularly on abortion—often controlled decisions. She was certainly one of the most powerful women in the history of the United States.
The Court as Reflective of Public Opinion
Toobin argues that the justices usually have a pretty good sense of the public’s stance on the issues. While it does not determine their decisions (the law does), for many justices, it is a guide as to how far is too far to go in either direction politically. Justice O’Connor was particularly adept at gauging public opinion and her natural disposition to finding the middle ground on an issue worked well in this regard. Toobin writes that the rightward shift of the Court after 2005 is a reflection of the same in American society.
The Court as Political Institution
This theme is illustrated many times in book, but no more so than in the discussion of the 2000 presidential election. Toobin states directly that the Court’s involvement in selecting the winner was an unprecedented low point in its history. He shows the partisan behavior of nearly all the justices during this time and concludes that “[t]he tragedy of the Court’s performance in the election of 2000 was not that it led to Bush’s victory but the inept and unsavory manner with which the justices exercised their power” (176).
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