Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices

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

A wonderful and entertaining study of the Supreme Court and how its decisions are, ultimately, determined by the personalities and ideas of its members. It reads like a thriller, and you won't want to put it down even though you know what happened. The Roosevelt era is fascinating and this book adds a great deal to its history.

A wonderfully written book. Captures the ambitions, insecurities, and sensibilities of four of President Roosevelt's most influential Supreme Court appointees. Feldman gets into the head of each Supreme Court Justice--and reflects on how personal upbringing, history, experiences--may have informed their thinking and decision-making. And the author also does a good job of breaking down legal concepts for everyday people.I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

A terrific book for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. It brings to life these extraordinary judges and their lasting imprint on our country’s legal framework.

Their names do not roll off the tongue with the familiarity of, say, John, Paul, George and Ringo—the Fab Four Beatles. But in their day, as architects of the New Deal and later as justices of the Supreme Court, their names were nearly as well known, the Fab Four of New Deal crusaders who shaped the American political landscape as few ever have. Four more different men could hardly have been imagined: Felix Frankfurter, a Jewish intellectual born in Vienna and raised in the U.S.; Hugo Black, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan; Robert Jackson, a folksy country lawyer from upstate New York; and William Douglas, a Westerner with a penchant for cowboy hats and a burning desire to be president. They began as friends and members of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inner circle, and ended as bitter rivals on the Supreme Court—as “scorpions,” as the author would have it. Author Noah Feldman tells their stories with zest and remarkable insight and the singular role each of them played during an incredibly turbulent 30-year era of American history, from the Great Depression to World War II to Brown v. Board of Education. At the same time, he shows FDR to be a man of unsinkable determination and of considerable charm, blessed with an eye for picking talent.The book is really two stories. The first is about the rise of the Fab Four, their relationship with FDR, with each other, and the pivotal roles they played in advancing New Deal policies. Each of them knew FDR in some capacity prior to his election as President in 1932.— Frankfurter was the first to capture FDR’s attention. Frankfurter was a progressive and a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union with a seat at Harvard Law School. From Cambridge, he drafted New Deal legislation and staffed New Deal agencies. Insiders described him as “the most influential single individual in the United States.”— Born and raised in the Deep South, Black joined the Ku Klux Klan to further his political career. After being elected to the U.S. Senate, he distanced himself from the Klan and gained national attention as head of a Senate subcommittee investigating corporate corruption.— Jackson, from the back country of upstate New York, rose to fame as a superb trial lawyer, despite never having graduated from law school. His increasingly prominent role in the American Bar Association brought him to Washington and the attention of FDR, who appointed him first as solicitor general and then as attorney general.— Douglas, like Frankfurter, made his name in academic circles, first as a student at Columbia law school and then as a Yale law professor. Intensely ambitious, Douglas was appointed head of the newly formed SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and uncovered considerable Wall Street corruption. He told the management of the New York Stock Exchange that they had to reorganize themselves to his satisfaction or else. “If you produce a plan of reorganization,” he told them, “I’ll let you run the Exchange. But if you just go on horse-trading, I’ll step in and run it myself.”The second part of the story involves the court, two courts actually, the court of public opinion and the Supreme Court. On trial was New Deal legislation designed to create new jobs for the twenty-five percent of the nation out of work, and the creation of government agencies designed to regulate financial markets. The feeling among many was that the Roosevelt administration had gone too far, with policies that smacked of socialism. In fact, the goal of the New Deal was to preserve market capitalism by regulating its potentially corrupt features, and it acquired a name—liberalism. Socialism and communism called for transfer of the ownership of the means of production to the people, which meant, in effect, the state. Liberals flatly rejected that proposition. They wanted to save capitalism by fixing it. The court of public opinion ruled in favor of the New Deal by reelecting President Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, did not. In a number of 5-4 decisions, the High Court struck down various New Deal policies as unconstitutional. This led to “court packing,” Roosevelt’s threat to increase the size of the court from nine to as many as fifteen justices, in order to make way for new court appointees more favorable to his policies. The Supreme Court got the message: in the next case they ruled in favor of the New Deal.Hugo Black was the first of Fab Four to be appointed to the Supreme Court, filling a vacancy created by the death of a justice, in 1937. Frankfurter and Douglas were next to fill court vacancies, in 1939; Jackson was the last appointed to the bench, in 1941. In time, every justice on the Supreme Court would be appointed by FDR, and the High Court would become known as the Roosevelt Court. Once the best of friends, as Supreme Court justices the Fab Four soon became rivals and enemies. One of them—Justice Frankfurter—paradoxically, became a judicial conservative. Despite their New Deal heritage, the four did not always agree, but on the important decisions they usually did. The author discuses these cases in detail, but the thrust of their court years, indeed, the thrust of the book, is the case that changed the course of the nation—Brown v. Board of Education. Racial segregation in the South was a blight on America made painfully clear at the close of World War II. Writes the author: “The Nazis’ racial codes became archetypes of the evil character of the Third Reich. By the time the war was over and the overtly racist powers of Germany and Japan had been defeated, it had become increasingly difficult to justify race-based segregation in the United States.”The case came before the High Court in 1952. The Fab Four, while initially divided on whether this was the right time or not to render a favorable decision, correctly recognized that this would be the most important decision of the Roosevelt Court. Rather than act immediately, they sat on the case for over a year. During that time, Earl Warren was appointed as Chief Justice and he wasted little time in pushing for an immediate and favorable decision. In fact, he wanted a unanimous decision, and spent his first months on the bench getting all the justices to agree—no mean feat. Warren also wrote the ground-breaking decision. The Brown Court decision makes for a fascinating story, not to be missed, and is the culmination of the book. Justices Black, Douglas, Frankfurter and Jackson would go down in American history as among the most influential justices to have ever sat on the bench. The court, meanwhile, would never be the same after Brown, focusing more on decisions that favored the right of minorities and advanced individual freedom. “There is no one way to interpret the Constitution,” writes the author, “and the lives of the greatest justices reflect that reality. Driven by prudence, by principle, by pragmatism, or by policy, the justices at their best make the Constitution their own. Arguing about its true meaning, striving to make sense of its contours and its commands, is the essence of what makes us loyal to it. To interpret the Constitution by its own best light is to be an American.”

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.

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