This is basically a book that looks briefly at bad decisions the court has rendered at the end of its term one year ago, but it includes a brisk history of the court’s last 200 years, from the disastrous lows of Dred Scott v Sandford (1857) and Plessy v Ferguson (1896) to the highs of Brown v Board of Education (1954) and Obergefell v Hodges (2015). The unmooring of the court from stare decisis is at core the concern and a blueprint for why this unravels the authority of the court, and the justices that play those roles. What the book does do is to pose possible reasons for each justice's position from their own life experiences, which is bad enough, but what it does not do is to pose questions about the outside influences essentially buying decisions from various justices--much of the information about Alito, Thomas, and Roberts getting big payouts from right wing donors who have had decisions go their way is a further erosion of public faith in the work that the court does. It also side steps the question of who leaked the Dobbs decision to the press, when it seems the preponderance of evidence is that it was Alito himself, attempting (successfully) to box other justices in, and creating the firestorm of support for abortion nationally, even in conservative bastions--at least so far. This book would be best if you were not already following the court closely and wondering exactly how bad this really is.
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