Politics & Government
![Linda Greenhouse - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_linda_greenhouse.jpg)
Justice on the Brink: A Requiem for the Supreme Court
The gripping story of the Supreme Court's transformation from a measured institution of law and justice into a highly politicized body dominated by a right-wing supermajority, told through the dramatic lens of its most transformative year, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning law columnist for The New York Times-with a new preface by the author
"A dazzling feat . . . meaty, often scintillating and sometimes scary . . . Greenhouse is a virtuoso of SCOTUS analysis."-The Washington Post
In Justice on the Brink, legendary journalist Linda Greenhouse gives us unique insight into a court under stress, providing the context and brilliant analysis readers of her work in The New York Times have come to expect. In a page-turning narrative, she recounts the twelve months when the court turned its back on its legacy and traditions, abandoning any effort to stay above and separate from politics. With remarkable clarity and deep institutional knowledge, Greenhouse shows the seeds being planted for the court's eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, expansion of access to guns, and unprecedented elevation of religious rights in American society. Both a chronicle and a requiem, Justice on the Brink depicts the struggle for the soul of the Supreme Court, and points to the future that awaits all of us.
"A dazzling feat . . . meaty, often scintillating and sometimes scary . . . Greenhouse is a virtuoso of SCOTUS analysis."-The Washington Post
In Justice on the Brink, legendary journalist Linda Greenhouse gives us unique insight into a court under stress, providing the context and brilliant analysis readers of her work in The New York Times have come to expect. In a page-turning narrative, she recounts the twelve months when the court turned its back on its legacy and traditions, abandoning any effort to stay above and separate from politics. With remarkable clarity and deep institutional knowledge, Greenhouse shows the seeds being planted for the court's eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, expansion of access to guns, and unprecedented elevation of religious rights in American society. Both a chronicle and a requiem, Justice on the Brink depicts the struggle for the soul of the Supreme Court, and points to the future that awaits all of us.
Editorial Reviews
"[Linda Greenhouse is] the dean of Supreme Court journalists."-The New York Times Book Review
"Linda Greenhouse is a kind of Gibbon of the Supreme Court, a chronicler of such perception and such depth that it is difficult to imagine how we could understand this vital and opaque institution without her. As Americans, we are nearly overwhelmed by coverage of the presidency and of the Congress, but the court remains stubbornly elusive-except to Greenhouse. This landmark new book gives us an invaluable perspective on the Supreme Court in democracy's hour of maximum danger."-Jon Meacham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Linda Greenhouse has written what is, hands down, the best book about the Supreme Court, its inner dynamics, and its place in the nation's political and social life at least since Alexander Bickel's classic, The Least Dangerous Branch, written in 1962. Choosing this pivotal moment in the flow of America's history to open a revealing window into the history and workings of our highest court and a peek into its future and our own was a stroke of genius. Her account of the court from the death of Ruth Ginsburg to the rise of Amy Barrett moves at the pace of a thriller and teaches more about the court as an institution and the law as a discipline than any book of its length has any right to do."-Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus, Harvard Law School
"Linda Greenhouse's surpassing ability to decode the Supreme Court and consummate storytelling illuminate a truly watershed year. This is the book to read and reread for anyone wanting to understand what lies behind this pivotal time for American law and the legitimacy of American institutions."-Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University, and former dean, Harvard Law School
"Linda Greenhouse, one of America's most astute writers about the Supreme Court, has written a remarkable book: a month-by-month narrative of Amy Coney Barrett's first year on the court that combines a riveting account of the legal arguments in pathbreaking cases―including cases involving religion, abortion, voting rights, and affirmative action―with compelling insights about how each of the nine justices resolved them. Justice on the Brink is invaluable for all citizens who want to understand the future of the court and the Constitution."-Jeffrey Rosen, president and chief execu...
"Linda Greenhouse is a kind of Gibbon of the Supreme Court, a chronicler of such perception and such depth that it is difficult to imagine how we could understand this vital and opaque institution without her. As Americans, we are nearly overwhelmed by coverage of the presidency and of the Congress, but the court remains stubbornly elusive-except to Greenhouse. This landmark new book gives us an invaluable perspective on the Supreme Court in democracy's hour of maximum danger."-Jon Meacham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Linda Greenhouse has written what is, hands down, the best book about the Supreme Court, its inner dynamics, and its place in the nation's political and social life at least since Alexander Bickel's classic, The Least Dangerous Branch, written in 1962. Choosing this pivotal moment in the flow of America's history to open a revealing window into the history and workings of our highest court and a peek into its future and our own was a stroke of genius. Her account of the court from the death of Ruth Ginsburg to the rise of Amy Barrett moves at the pace of a thriller and teaches more about the court as an institution and the law as a discipline than any book of its length has any right to do."-Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus, Harvard Law School
"Linda Greenhouse's surpassing ability to decode the Supreme Court and consummate storytelling illuminate a truly watershed year. This is the book to read and reread for anyone wanting to understand what lies behind this pivotal time for American law and the legitimacy of American institutions."-Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University, and former dean, Harvard Law School
"Linda Greenhouse, one of America's most astute writers about the Supreme Court, has written a remarkable book: a month-by-month narrative of Amy Coney Barrett's first year on the court that combines a riveting account of the legal arguments in pathbreaking cases―including cases involving religion, abortion, voting rights, and affirmative action―with compelling insights about how each of the nine justices resolved them. Justice on the Brink is invaluable for all citizens who want to understand the future of the court and the Constitution."-Jeffrey Rosen, president and chief execu...
Readers Top Reviews
LuAnn J. BeamerCR
Although I haven't read it in it's entirety, I love the cover and the ocntents.
Golf ReaderLuAnn
An excellent summary of the dircrtion of the Supreme Court including references to key cases some if which have had little publicity
John WoznickGolf
Linda Greenhouse's book is an excellent analysis of the recent changes in the Supreme Court and where they might lead. She reviews the last year in court cases and examines the direction the court has moved taking into account incremental changes in rulings over time. She is an excellent writer. The story is fascinating and easy to read with the background she provides.
GaryJohn WoznickG
I got a lot out of this book. While I knew of the headlines (Hobby Lobby, Wedding cakes, etc.), I did not understand the details that got us to this point. Linda explains those details nicely. It helps to just make a quick note on what each case is about when it first appears in the book. This way, you don't have to go back to refresh your memory about the specifics of the several (many?) cases. Like many, I am really disappointed in how religious freedoms are protected by the state, but the state is not protected from religious bigotry. Alas.
Eric HobartGaryJo
Linda Greenhouse is a Yale law school professor who also writes a regular column about the Supreme Court. In her latest work, Justice on the Brink, she explains to us why the 2020-2021 term was so monumental and why we need to think seriously about the Supreme Court whenever we are electing our governmental officials. Greenhouse sets the stage with the unexpected passing of Justice Ginsburg, and the woman who took her seat on the court - Amy Barrett. As the junior associate justice, Barrett is not yet versed in the etiquette or traditions of the court, but she has the all important vote that counts the same as the most senior justice (Clarence Thomas). Greenhouse provides us with a number of critical cases throughout the term that shows how the court is steadily marching to the right - and with it, out of step with the Chief Justice, John Roberts. Although Roberts is still the First among equals, he is no longer the swing vote in a relatively evenly divided chamber. As Greenhouse explains for roughly the last 45 years, we've had an ideological balance - 4 liberals, 4 conservatives, and 1 "swing vote". Prior to Ginsburg's death, Roberts was that swing vote, which kept the court from becoming too political or too reactive. With Barrett on the court, we now have a 6-3 conservative bent, and there is no "swing vote" to be had. The 3 liberals (Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor) are consistently outnumbered, therefore fighting a "losing battle" for their viewpoints. This is the most significant change coming from the 2020-21 term, as I saw it. Greenhouse does a very nice job of analyzing the court, it's various members, including their personalities and how they mesh with each other. She recognizes that a term is like a "snapshot in time" of the court, but it does help us to understand the inner workings - especially when the Court goes through such a tumultuous shift in such a short time frame.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter one
July • The Triumph of John Roberts
Just as baseball fans relish statistics, so do Supreme Court watchers: how often a justice votes with the majority, how often in dissent, how often allied with this colleague or that one. With the numbers, a portrait takes shape to reveal a justice's power and role on the court. For Chief Justice Roberts, the portrait that emerged from the term that ended on July 9, 2020, was one of triumph.
Of the term's fifty-three cases decided with signed opinions-an unusually low number, due to the postponement of cases scheduled for argument early in the shutdown-he was in dissent in only two, fewer than any of his colleagues and his own record low for his fifteen years on the court. The easiest way to keep track of the court during the term's nine months was simply to look for John Roberts, finding him in the majority in decisions on presidential immunity, immigration policy, religion, abortion, protections for LGBT employees, and nearly everything else.
He managed at crucial moments to navigate across the court's ideological divide. He maintained the court's focus when the pandemic drove the justices from their chambers and their courtroom, leaving them to hear cases not on a fancy Internet platform but over their home telephones. And as important as anything else was this: Under a hot election-year spotlight, he kept the Supreme Court out of trouble. After the court handed down its last decisions on July 9, two weeks later than usual, he was entitled to feel both relief and pride.
It might so easily have been otherwise, as he surely knew. Had the 2016 presidential election turned out as most people expected, a President Hillary Clinton would have filled the Scalia vacancy, and Roberts would have found himself facing the prospect of near irrelevance. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as the senior justice among five liberals on the court, would have been able to shape the course of events, leaving the chief justice a bystander.
Of course, not every Supreme Court case turns on ideology. Most do not; during the term that included the 2016 election, the court decided more than half its cases unanimously. But when ideology matters, it matters greatly. The loss of a reliable conservative majority would have doomed two projects on which Roberts, with Scalia as a reliable ally, was making steady progress. Those two projects lay at the center of the national conversation, indeed at the heart of the country's struggle to define itself during the opening decades of the twenty-first century. One involved race, the other religion. Roberts's long-term plan was to change how the Constitution understood both, and now, with Donald Trump having filled the Scalia and Kennedy vacancies, he was in a position to achieve his goal.
There had not been a case concerning racial equality on the docket for the 2019–20 term, but that was an anomaly-a fortunate one for any chief justice interested in his court's keeping a low profile, given the urgent racial reckoning that shook the country following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis on May 25. Race would certainly be back, and Roberts was ready, even though he might not have been aware that an important new Voting Rights Act case had arrived at the court in April, filed by Arizona Republicans seeking to limit the use of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to attack measures that result in suppressing the vote. It would be early fall before the petition made its way to the justices for action.
The debate over public policy concerning race-voting rights and affirmative action, to which he referred, dismissively, as "racial balancing"-had drawn Roberts's interest since his earliest days as a lawyer. In 1981, direct from a Supreme Court clerkship, he had joined the Reagan administration, where he was an eager participant in the administration's program to dismantle or at least curtail race-conscious policies across the government and in the private sector as well. Serving first as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith and later as a lawyer in the White House counsel's office, he wrote strongly worded memos marshaling opposition to efforts under way in Congress to renew an expiring section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and to restore another section that a 1980 Supreme Court decision had undercut. These internal memos came to light in 2005 when President George W. Bush nominated Roberts to be chief justice, and they provided what little substance there was to the Democrats' tepid opposition to his confirmation.
On becoming chief justice, John Roberts had moved quickly to convert his long-held views into law. A case known by the shorthand Parents Involved rea...
July • The Triumph of John Roberts
Just as baseball fans relish statistics, so do Supreme Court watchers: how often a justice votes with the majority, how often in dissent, how often allied with this colleague or that one. With the numbers, a portrait takes shape to reveal a justice's power and role on the court. For Chief Justice Roberts, the portrait that emerged from the term that ended on July 9, 2020, was one of triumph.
Of the term's fifty-three cases decided with signed opinions-an unusually low number, due to the postponement of cases scheduled for argument early in the shutdown-he was in dissent in only two, fewer than any of his colleagues and his own record low for his fifteen years on the court. The easiest way to keep track of the court during the term's nine months was simply to look for John Roberts, finding him in the majority in decisions on presidential immunity, immigration policy, religion, abortion, protections for LGBT employees, and nearly everything else.
He managed at crucial moments to navigate across the court's ideological divide. He maintained the court's focus when the pandemic drove the justices from their chambers and their courtroom, leaving them to hear cases not on a fancy Internet platform but over their home telephones. And as important as anything else was this: Under a hot election-year spotlight, he kept the Supreme Court out of trouble. After the court handed down its last decisions on July 9, two weeks later than usual, he was entitled to feel both relief and pride.
It might so easily have been otherwise, as he surely knew. Had the 2016 presidential election turned out as most people expected, a President Hillary Clinton would have filled the Scalia vacancy, and Roberts would have found himself facing the prospect of near irrelevance. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as the senior justice among five liberals on the court, would have been able to shape the course of events, leaving the chief justice a bystander.
Of course, not every Supreme Court case turns on ideology. Most do not; during the term that included the 2016 election, the court decided more than half its cases unanimously. But when ideology matters, it matters greatly. The loss of a reliable conservative majority would have doomed two projects on which Roberts, with Scalia as a reliable ally, was making steady progress. Those two projects lay at the center of the national conversation, indeed at the heart of the country's struggle to define itself during the opening decades of the twenty-first century. One involved race, the other religion. Roberts's long-term plan was to change how the Constitution understood both, and now, with Donald Trump having filled the Scalia and Kennedy vacancies, he was in a position to achieve his goal.
There had not been a case concerning racial equality on the docket for the 2019–20 term, but that was an anomaly-a fortunate one for any chief justice interested in his court's keeping a low profile, given the urgent racial reckoning that shook the country following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis on May 25. Race would certainly be back, and Roberts was ready, even though he might not have been aware that an important new Voting Rights Act case had arrived at the court in April, filed by Arizona Republicans seeking to limit the use of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to attack measures that result in suppressing the vote. It would be early fall before the petition made its way to the justices for action.
The debate over public policy concerning race-voting rights and affirmative action, to which he referred, dismissively, as "racial balancing"-had drawn Roberts's interest since his earliest days as a lawyer. In 1981, direct from a Supreme Court clerkship, he had joined the Reagan administration, where he was an eager participant in the administration's program to dismantle or at least curtail race-conscious policies across the government and in the private sector as well. Serving first as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith and later as a lawyer in the White House counsel's office, he wrote strongly worded memos marshaling opposition to efforts under way in Congress to renew an expiring section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and to restore another section that a 1980 Supreme Court decision had undercut. These internal memos came to light in 2005 when President George W. Bush nominated Roberts to be chief justice, and they provided what little substance there was to the Democrats' tepid opposition to his confirmation.
On becoming chief justice, John Roberts had moved quickly to convert his long-held views into law. A case known by the shorthand Parents Involved rea...
