READING LIST*
COM 400W. One option for this semester’s book review is a biography or autobiography of a
past or present Supreme Court Justice. A partial list is printed as an appendix on pages 381382 of the Eastland casebook. This list is supplemented below.
Aichele, Gary J. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Soldier, Scholar Judge (Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1989).
Baker, Leonard. Brandeis and Frankfurter: A Dual Biography (New York: Harper and Row,
1984).
Bent, Silas. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City
Publishing Co., 1932).
Biskupic, Joan. American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2009).
Black, Hugo L. and Elizabeth Black. Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black: The Memoirs of Hugo L. Black
and Elizabeth Black (New York: Random House, 1986).
Brisbin Jr., Richard A. Justice Antonin Scala and the Conservative Revival (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
Bronner, Ethan. Battle For Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1989).
Clark, Hunter R. Justice Brennan: The Great Conciliator (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995).
Cray, Ed. Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).
Davis, Michael D. and Clark, Hunter R. Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the
Bench (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992).
Douglas, William O. The Court Years 1939-1975, The Autobiography of William O. Douglas
(New York: Vintage Books, 1981).
Ely, James W. Jr. The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910 (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1995).
Friendly, Fred W. Minnesota Rag: The Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case
That Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press (New York:1982).
Greenhouse, Linda. Becoming Justice Blackmun (New York: Times Books, 2005).
Kalman, Laura. Abe Fortas: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
Maltz, Earl M. The Chief Justiceship of Warren Burger 1969-1986 (University of South Carolina
Press, 2000).
Mason, Alpheus Thomas. William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1964).
Merida, Kevin and Michael A. Fletcher. Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence
Thomas (New York: Broadway Books, 2007).
Murphy, Bruce Allen. Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas (New York:
Random House, 2003).
Newman, Roger K. Hugo Black: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994).
Paper, Lewis J. Brandeis (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1983).
Przybyszewski, Linda The Republic according to John Marshall Harlan (The University of
North Carolina Press, 1999).
RosenKranz, E. Joshua, and Bernard Schwartz. Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan’s
Enduring Influence (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997).
Schwartz, Bernard, and Lesher, Stephan. Inside the Warren Court (Garden City: Doubleday
& Company, 1983).
Simon, James F. The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Civil Liberties in Modern
America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
Smith, Jean Edward. John Marshall, Definer of a Nation (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1996).
Stevens, John Paul. Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (New York: Little, Brown and Co.,
2011).
Thomas, Clarence. My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).
Tushnet, Mark, ed. Thurgood Marshall, His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and
Reminiscences (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2001).
*NOTE: There are hundreds of biographies written on U.S. Supreme Court Justices. The book
you choose to review does not have to be on this list.
It would be smart to choose a book related to your term paper topic. If you prefer to
review a book not on this list, see me for prior approval. A more general reading list is posted on
Canvas under “Resources.”
[Addendum to Freedom of Expression in the Supreme Court, pp. 381, 382]
Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court
before 1919
John Jay
John Rutledge
Oliver Ellsworth
John Marshall
Roger B. Taney
Salmon P. Chase
Morrison Waite
Melville Fuller
1789-1795
1795
1796-1800
1801-1835
1836-1864
1864-1873
1874-1888
1888-1910
Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed since 1999
__________________________________________________
Appointing
President
Justice
Replaced
Oath
Taken
_________________________________________________
John Roberts
Samuel Alito
Sonia Sotomayor
Elena Kagan
G.W. Bush
G.W. Bush
Obama
Obama
Rehnquist
O’Connor
Souter
Stevens
Sept. 2005
Jan. 2006
Aug. 2009
Aug. 2010
READING LIST*
COM 400W. Students in this section of Communication Law and Ethics may review a book
dealing directly with the U.S. Supreme Court. Here are some examples of the kind of books
that would be appropriate choices:
Bork, Robert H. The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).
Bork, Robert H. Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New
York: ReganBooks, 1996).
Cox, Archibald. The Court and the Constitution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987).
Cray, Ed. Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).
Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the
United States Supreme Court (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007).
Hughes, Charles Evans. The Supreme Court of the United States (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1928).
Irons, Peter. A People’s History of the Supreme Court (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).
Johnson, Timothy R. and Jerry Goldman. A Good Quarrel: America’s Top Legal reporters Share
Stories from Inside the Supreme Court (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009).
Lazarus, Edward. Closed Chambers (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
Maltz, Earl M. The Chief Justiceship of Warren Burger 1969-1986 (University of South Carolina
Press, 2000).
Mathewson, Joe. The Supreme Court and the Press (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 2011).
O’Connor, Sandra Day. Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court (New
York: Random House, 2013).
Rehnquist, William H. The Supreme Court (New York: Knopf, 2001)
Rehnquist, William H. The Supreme Court, Revised and Updated (New York: Vintage Books,
2002)
Rosen, Jeffrey The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America (New
York: Times Books, 2006).
Scalia, Antonin. A Matter of Interpretation, Federal Courts and the Law (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997).
Schwartz, Bernard, and Lesher, Stephan. Inside the Warren Court (Garden City: Doubleday
& Company, 1983).
Shesol, Jeff. Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court (New York: W.W.
Norton Co., 2010).
Starr, Kenneth W. First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life (New York:
Warner Books, 2002).
Stevens, John Paul. Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (New York: Little, Brown and Co.,
2011).
Tobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (New York: Anchor
Books, 2008).
Tobin, Jeffrey. The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court (New York: Anchor
Books, 2012).
Tushnet, Mark. A Court Divided, The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law
(New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005).
Tushnet, Mark. In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 2013).
Woodward, Bob and Armstrong, Scott. The Brethren, Inside the Supreme Court (New
York: Avon Books, 1979).
*NOTE: There are dozens, if not hundreds, of books written on the U.S. Supreme Court. The
book you choose to review does not have to be on this list. If you prefer to review a book not on
this list, see me for prior approval.
Appendix A
Book Reviews
From: Richard Marius and Melvin Page, A Short Guide to Writing About History
(New York: Longman Publishers, 2002), 212-215.
Your instructor may provide very specific instructions about what should
appear in such a review; if so, heed them. But here are some general guidelines that
should help you in writing better book reviews no matter what your specific
instructions may be.
1. Read the book! That may seem self-evident, but it remains perhaps the
most important advice about writing a book review. Now and then even
professional historians don’t read the books they review in journals. You can see
their errors when outraged authors write to protest; occasionally you will find such
communications in historical journals. Don’t let that happen to you! If you find and
read one or more academic reviews of the book you have been assigned or have
selected to review you may learn a great deal. But that is not a substitute for reading
the book and making your own judgments. Also remember: Fundamental honesty
requires for you to say if you take something –ideas or quotations –for your book
review from a review someone else has written.
2. Identify the author, but don’t waste time on needless or extravagant
claims about her or him. It is a cliché to say that the author is “well qualified” to
write a book. You may write briefly about the author’s background and perhaps the
work he or she put into creating the book you are reviewing. But don’t belabor the
point.
3. Always give the author’s major theme or thesis, his or her motive for
writing the book. How do you find that theme or these? Read the book
thoughtfully. Always read the introduction or the preface. Students in a hurry may
skip the introduction, thinking they are saving time. That can be a serious mistake.
Authors often use introductions to state the reasons that impelled them to write
their books. Indeed, we recommend you read the preface, the introduction, and the
last chapter of a book before you read the complete work. Few writers can bear to
leave their books without a parting shot: they want to be sure readers get the point!
Reviewers should take advantage of that impulse. Some of our students object to our
advice that they read the last chapter first. We remind them that history books are
not novels, and good history books—as well as shorter essays—almost never have
surprise endings. By reading the last chapter, you see where the author is heading as
you read the entire book. And always remember the terms “theme” and “thesis” are
not quite the same as the subject. The subject of the book may be the biography of
Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain during World War II. The theme
or thesis, however, may be that Churchill was a great wartime leader but a poor
interpreter of the post –war world.
4. Summarize, but only briefly, the evidence the author presents in
support of the thesis. Do not fall into the habit of writing a summary of the book as
if you were writing a report rather than a review. This approach seldom can be
translated into a successful book review. Don’t try to report every interesting detail
in the book. Leave something for readers to discover on their own. But it frequently
is a good idea to recount some interesting incidents. Tell a story or two from the
book. You may also wish to consider the types of evidence the author has used and
particularly the effort to rely upon primary sources.
5. Consider quoting a line or two here and there to give the flavor of the
text. Quote selectively but fairly. The prose of the author you review may help spice
up your own review. But avoid long chunks of quotation. You must show your
readers that you have absorbed the book you review.
6. Avoid lengthy comments about the style of the book. Saying that the
style is good, bad, interesting, or tedious is fine. If a book is especially well written
or if it is incomprehensible, you may quote a sentence to illustrate a good or bad
style, but don’t belabor the point. Generalizations such as, “This book is interesting,”
or, “This book is boring,” do little to enhance your review. If you do your job in the
review, readers can tell whether you find it interesting or boring. And remember, if
you are bored, the fault may be in you rather than the book. An Ancient History
professor at the University of Tennessee, when one of us said reading Plutarch was
boring, declared sternly, “Mr. Marius, you have no right to be bored with Plutarch.”
Both of us agree he was right.
7. Don’t feel compelled to say negative things about the book. If you find
inaccuracies, say so. If you disagree with the writer’s interpretation here and there,
say that, too, giving your reasons. However, you should avoid passionate attacks on
the book. Scholarship is not always courteous, but it should be. Reviewers who
launch savage attacks on books usually make fools of themselves. Remember, too,
that petty complaints about the book may also make you look foolish or unfair. Don’t
waste time pointing out typos unless they change the meaning the author intends.
Always remember that every good book has its flaws. The author may make some
minor errors in face or some questionable judgments. Even so, the book may be
extremely valuable. Don’t condemn a book outright because you find some mistakes.
Try to judge the book as a whole.
8. Judge the book the author has written. You may wish the author had
written a different book. You might write a different book yourself. But the author
has written this book. If the book did not need to be written, if it adds nothing to our
knowledge of the field, if it makes conclusions unwarranted by the evidence, say so.
But don’t review the book as if it should be another book.
9. Try to bring something from your own experience—your reading,
your thoughts, your reflections, your recollections—to the book. If you are
reviewing a book about early twentieth-century China, and if you have been
fortunate enough to have traveled in China, you may bring your own impressions to
the review of the book. Try to make use of a broad part of your education when you
review a book. If you have read other book sin other classes that are relevant to this
class, say something about those books in your review. If you know facts the author
has overlooked, say so. But avoid writing as if you possess independent knowledge
of the author’s subject when in fact you have taken all you know from the book
itself. Don’t pretend to be an expert when you are not. Be honest.
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