Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices Hardcover – 8 November 2010

An excellent biography of the lives, times and contributions of four great judges, during an exciting and challenging period in the U.S and generally. Engrossing narrative in succinct, crisp and highly readable prose

How judiciary will be impartial

My law school years are far behind me, but Prof. Feldman’s wonderful book illuminates the great pleasure the law uniquely affords its practitioners: that of thinking hard-to the best of one’s ability- about how to debate and even try to solve life’s endless problems within the the shadowy but looming discipline of the Law. Read this great book and then regret, as I do, that you did not know Justices Black, Douglas, Frankfurter and Jackson.

And even that depends upon politics.At the beginning of FDR's presidencies, Originalist philosophy was considered being a Liberal. At the end, and now, it's being a Right-winger.Since 2016, my interest in the Supreme Court has grown, as has my interest in social issues and politics.Prior to the "surprises" and "failures" of our Democracy, lately, I didn't think that much about the Supreme Court. Quite frankly, I took the Supreme Court for granted."Scorpions" is a great psychosocial history of how Supreme Court justices interpret and "make" new law. It is also a great look at what considerations go into the jurists' decisions.You might be surprised to learn that many decisions, including "Brown v. Education" was less about de-segregation, and more about how America's racism was copied by both Germany and the Soviet bloc states, despite the fact that America's part in the Nuremberg trials.While "Brown v. Education" passed because our international reputation depended upon looking at African Americans has humans, equal to all other races in America, it was a gradual process, because jurist feared that if "Brown" were passed, without a gradual process, jurists feared "there would be riots in the streets, and school closures in the South. Sound familiar?Read this book to understand our history, and to vote for a president who is likely to nominate Supreme Court jurists whose social justice philosophies align with your own.

One would think that a book about 4 Supreme Court Justices written by a Harvard academic would be a real dozer; dry, dull, boring, and full of legalese. Happily I can report that that is most certainly not the case with this story of Justices Frankfurter, Douglas, Jackson, and Black. I would never have risked purchasing this book but for the positive review of a GR friend (thanks Matt) as my experience with books by academics is not good. Academics seem to write for other academics and not the general reading public which is most unfortunate as it is the public that needs to read these books. But my friend's review stirred my interest so I bought the book, read it, and enjoyed it immensely.Mr. Feldman has given us a book that primarily traces the professional careers of these 4 eminent justices but the main focus is on their tenures on the SCOTUS. Each justice's life is given in detail sufficient to understand their adult lives and careers but this book is not a full blown biography of each of these men. If I understand the author's position he believes these 4 men entered the SCOTUS as liberal New Deal appointees of FDR united in their loyalty to their president and his programs to rebuild the American economy and then win a war. At first these men were allies and something of a team in their efforts to aid the efforts of FDR and the New Deal. But this unity was not to last. After FDR died in 1945 the team lost their captain and the New Deal was part of the past. This is when the book, for me, became interesting, very interesting.The only thing these 4 men had in common was FDR and now he was gone. What may have struck the author and most readers as odd was, to me, hardly anything but predictable. These men were all very intelligent, accomplished, ambitious, LAWYERS. These men were all classic Type A personalities or they would never have achieved the acclaim needed to be appointed to the SCOTUS. As a retired lawyer I think I would not be telling tales out of school to reveal that the members of my profession are not strong team players. Mostly lawyers are prima donnas and lone wolves and sharing spotlights runs against the grain. What I found unusual was that these 4 men were ever able to work cohesively together at all regardless of their loyalty to FDR but they did. Once FDR was gone, however, it should have surprised nobody that they started to split up and even became hostile to one another. The hostility brings us to another aspect of this book I enjoyed.It was more than a little amusing to read about the behind the scenes behavior of these justices. The SCOTUS has been traditionally cloaked in secrecy and very little is ever revealed about what goes on it that building across the street from the Capitol but this book gives us an eye full. In the course of discussing some of the major decisions reached by the Court during the tenures of these men the author reveals the motivations and reasoning, personal and political, that affected these decisions. This book clearly details the humanity of these 4 members of SCOTUS. While justices of the SCOTUS are the pinnacle of the American legal profession and are regarded as almost god-like in stature this book shows us that they are also human and that is rather disturbing as well as comforting. The author also traces what I believe is a universal fault of those that reach this pinnacle of our profession.In the course of tracing the evolution of SCOTUS decisions rendered during the tenures of these 4 justices the author details the attempts of each justice to formulate his own legal philosophy. This is what I consider a fault of being a SCOTUS justice. Each justice attempts to create some sort of mechanical system that will allow him/her to approach and decide each case in a consistent manner. The author's discussion of Justice Frankfurter's anguish over the Brown v Board of Education case most clearly illustrates the problems with creating such a consistent philosophy. Frankfurter clearly wanted to rule to end segregation but his philosophy of judicial restraint conflicted with his desired outcome. He didn't want to be viewed as inconsistent and he tortured himself about how to reconcile his desired outcome with his philosophy. To my mind the only consistency a judge should strive to achieve is a just outcome using the law as a guide but not as straightjacket. If the law was meant to be applied mechanically then it wouldn't have been placed in the hands of human beings. The law is a tool to be intelligently used by humans to achieve justice and creating a legal philosophy will eventually only put a judge in the same position Frankfurter found himself in with the Brown case. We lawyers love to over-think things sometimes.On the whole I found this book to be a work that can be read by a layman as well as a lawyer and appreciated by both. The author ably treats his subjects and the details of SCOTUS history and the evolution of Court decisions in a manner easily understandable to any reader without it appearing to be dumb-downed. The wealth of inside information and history is a joy and a revelation to discover and part of the value of reading histories. If you are interested in FDR, the Depression, the New Deal, or the modern SCOTUS then this book would be something you should definitely read and enjoy. (less)flag4 likes · comment · see review

Mr Feldman has written a book about the Supreme Court during and shortly after Franklin Roosevelt's presidency that is extremely interesting, but also highly disturbing to those who believe that the Supreme Court rules based on their interpretation of the US Constitution.On the positive side the book is fascinating and so well written that I found it hard to put down. The descriptions of the justices being studied, Frankfurter, Douglas, Black and Jackson, all appointed by Roosevelt, are full of life and make the individuals seem real, even to someone who was of much too young an age to have known anything about them when they served on the Court. The stories of their lives, and of the obstacles they overcame, were riveting and it answered some questions I had always had about some of them. For example, how did a member of the KKK (Hugo Black), or a lawyer with no law degree (Robert Jackson) end up on the US Supreme Court. And the book concentrates on the major decisions of the court and how these justices, and those already on the court, came to decisions.The disturbing side of the book stems from the fact that the author makes it clear that many of the decisions by these justices were political rather than decisions made based on the written Constitution. The fact that the author believes these were the right decisions, even if they were political, is even more disturbing, and casts a light on the political views of the author and shades the otherwise eye opening content.While I don't normally do this, some of the information was so startling to me that I began to make Notes in the Kindle reader and found that by the end of the book I had made 38 of them, each passage startling enough to me to cause me to make the note. Statements like "What matters is what works in the real world, not the law on the books." and "political cover would be provided for the Roosevelt administration's detention policy", and many others, were truly disturbing to me, as were the brow-beating of some of the justices in order to arrive at a consensus.All in all an excellent book, worth the time to read, and full of eye opening content, even if some of it is information I would rather have not known. Highly recommended to those interested in knowing how some of the most important decisions of the court were arrived at.

Not only is Noah Feldman a legal scholar with vast experience and knowledge of the Constitution, the man is a wonderful writer. This page-turner about the titans of the Roosevelt court rarely lags in pacing. It presents the brilliance, pettiness, and complexity of men who had an outsized impact on American jurisprudence and American life.An examination of important case law and the path the justices took to their varied decisions on crucial matters should be dry and boring. This book is neither dry nor boring. It is a very human story stretched over the framework of some of the most storied decisions of the high court. Loved it.