Volume 45, Number 15 · October 8, 1998
Behind the Crimson Curtain
By Kathleen M. Sullivan
Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court
by Edward Lazarus
Times Books, 576 pp., $27.50
Whether or not it is the least dangerous branch of the federal government, the Supreme Court is surely the least visible. No television cameras cover its oral arguments; no floor debates or committee reports discuss its densely worded rulings; and the Justices bind themselves and their staffs, including the young law graduates who work as their clerks, to strong obligations of confidentiality about its inner processes. Biographies of Justices rarely appear until after they step down from the bench, and they then tend toward the hagiographic. And the personal papers of the Justices that might shed some light on their work typically remain embargoed for a generation after their deaths.
Review, 4308 words
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