The credentialed court : inside the cloistered, elite world of American justice / Benjamin H. Barton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barton, Benjamin H., 1969- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Judges--Selection and appointment--United States--History.

Judges.

United States. Supreme Court--Officials and employees--Selection and appointment--History.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Encounter Books, [2022]

Summary:

"Our Cloistered, Elite Supreme Court starts by establishing just how different today's Justices are from their predecessors. The book combines two massive empirical studies of every Justices' background from John Jay to Amy Coney Barrett with short, readable bios of past greats to demonstrate that today's Justices arrive on the Court with much narrower experiences than they once did. The modern Supreme Court specializes in cloistered and elite lives. Today's Justices have spent more time in elite academic settings (both as students and faculty) than any previous Courts. Every Justice but Barrett attended either Harvard or Yale Law School, and four of the Justices were tenured professors at prestigious law schools. They also spent more time as Federal Appellate Court Judges than any previous Courts. These two jobs (tenured law professor and appellate judge) share two critical components: both jobs are basically lifetime appointments that involve little or no contact with the public at large. The current Supreme Court is packed with a very specific type of person: type-A overachievers who have triumphed in a long tournament measuring academic and technical legal excellence. This Court desperately lacks individuals who reflect a different type of "merit." The book examines the exceptional and varied lives of past greats from John Marshall to Thurgood Marshall and asks how many, if any, of these giants would be nominated today. The book argues against our current bookish and narrow meritocracy. Healthier societies offer multiple different routes to success and onto bodies like our Supreme Court"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : the rise of our cloistered elite court

Part one. What we are missing

Two Marshalls and a Whizzer

Washington's first six : founders, politicians, entrepreneurs, and one Cushing

Washington's last four : bankruptcies, mental illness, and a Bacon face

Part two. The studies

The lawyer's lawyers disappear

Our lost lawyer-statesmen

The triumph of the circuit court judge

Changing case conferences to faculty meetings : the rise of law professors

From the Acela Corridor to the Beltway

From polymath autodidacts to hoop-jumpers extraordinaire

Let's make the justices weird again

Bring back phronesis and range

The narrowing of life's rich pageant : experiential diversity shrinks

Let's get this show back on the road.

Notes:

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Online version: Barton, Benjamin H., 1969- The credentialed court

ISBN:

9781641772051

1641772050

OCLC:

1310470139