| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Supreme Court: An Essential History. By Peter Charles Hoffer, Williamjames Hull Hoffer, and N. E. H. Hull. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. xii, 491 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-1538-4.)
This splendid interpretative summary of the history of the U.S. Supreme Court is designed for students and the general public. It is an effective textbook for American constitutional history courses and contains many insights of interest to professional historians. The authors emphasize the political context of crucial cases and the personalities of the justices, and they provide succinct biographical information on the justices and do not hesitate to be critical of them or their decisions.	1
The authors organize the book around the chief justices. The Marshall and Taney courts dominate early analysis, but as the interpretative narrative develops, the authors make explicit comparisons. The Warren Court focused on the "integrity of the justice system" and the Berger Court sought "public interest in securing convictions" (p. 402). The Rehnquist Court was like the Chase Court in that "politics divided the Court and dictated the shape of jurisprudence" (p. 442). They specifically relate cases to present law such as the observation that the phrase "unlawful combatants" from Ex parte Quirin (1942) is now in the 2006 Patriot Act. Readers are reminded that the past works curiously into the present.	. . .

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