For years, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has been at the center of a constitutional maelstrom. Here, the much-honored, expert Supreme Court reporter Marcia Coyle's examination of four landmark cases is "informative, insightful, clear and fair...Coyle reminds us that Supreme Court decisions matter. A lot." (Portland Oregonian).
Seven minutes after President Obama put his signature to a landmark national health care insurance program, a lawyer in the office of Florida GOP attorney general Bill McCollum hit a computer key, sparking a legal challenge to the new law that would eventually reach the nation’s highest court. Health care is only the most visible and recent front in a battle over the meaning and scope of the US Constitution. The battleground is the United States Supreme Court, and one of the most skilled, insightful, and trenchant of its observers takes us close up to watch it in action.
Marcia Coyle’s brilliant inside analysis of the High Court captures four landmark decisions—concerning health care, money in elections, guns at home, and race in schools. Coyle examines how those cases began and how they exposed the great divides among the justices, such as the originalists versus the pragmatists on guns and the Second Amendment, and corporate speech versus human speech in the controversial Citizens United case. Most dramatically, her reporting shows how dedicated conservative lawyers and groups have strategized to find cases and crafted them to bring up the judicial road to the Supreme Court with an eye on a receptive conservative majority.
The Roberts Court offers a ringside seat to the struggle to lay down the law of the land.
“The great strength of Coyle’s book is the depth and balance of her reporting... By allowing all the participants to speak in their own voices, she gives us a nuanced sense of how conservative and libertarian lawyers strategically litigated these cases and transformed the law…. [an] insightful book.”
“The Roberts Court is richly analytical and meticulously careful….even-handed and full of smart analysis….Coyle's shrewd reading of the cases is supplemented by skillful reporting on those who practice before the court….It's not the modest court that its chief once proposed; to the contrary, it is assertive, relevant and a bit scary — and worthy of this useful book.”
“Coyle’s impressive new book on the Supreme Court arrives at a propitious time, on the cusp of major forthcoming decisions on affirmative action, voting rights, gay marriage and the human genome that could rock the legal world….an accessible civics lesson, not only about the nation’s highest court but the process that leads up to those dramatic hours of oral argument—the plotting by plaintiffs and preparation by lawyers that goes largely untold….Coyle is an objective observer in a media environment dominated by invective and rants. Still, there’s plenty of analysis and insight here as the author takes us through major court rulings on race, guns and money from 2007 to 2009.”
“Informative, insightful, clear and fair….Coyle reminds us that Supreme Court decisions matter. A lot.”
