The Volokh Conspiracy

...Enter: George W. Bush and the setting of the stage for a full-blown conservative counterrevolution. Supreme Conflict contains entirely fresh perspectives across the entire sweep of its story, from the conservative movement's early fumbles with the nominations of justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter to its crowning successes with the appointments of justices Roberts and Alito....

And nomination of Harriet Miers. Another crowning success! One success after another with Mr. Bush.

Speaking of, heard him talk of the importance of the courts in the always forgettable SOTU, thought he might mention judicial pay, since the Chief Justice was sitting just a few feet away and has made his views on that very plain.

Yes, Congress has to act there, but no bully pulpit even one-liner from the President. Well, at least four of them bothered to show up. Is that the usual number? Speeches always so forgettable can't remember.

Not sure who is the lone holdout, but given that Greenburg describes Clarence Thomas's desk and Thomas's thinking process about one early case, I'm guessing that she talked to him, which is stunning given how rarely he talks to the media.

I'd like to reiterate a comment from a previous post. JC Greenburg is likely the finest high court reporter in the country, teaching Linda Greenhouse a thing or two when she covered the Court for the Chicago Tribune for years. We lost out when she went to TV.

But to be clear, she was and remains a member of the dreaded "MSM". Her accumen (which I'll attribute in part to a U of C law education) hasn't gotten better, or worse, since she's left print journalism. She's merely another example of fine reporting.

Wow. If *Roy Englert*, of all people, is learning new things "constantly" from this book, be amazed.

I purchased Greenburg's book yesterday at lunch. The bookstore in downtown DC hadn't put it out for sale yet and seemed surprised someone was asking for it, which was surprising to me given the amount of buzz and play it was getting before its release. In any event, I plowed through the book last night, all of it in a quick read. The first half or more is, as said above, pretty well plowed ground, given David Savage's "Turning Right" and Ed Lazarus's "Closed Chambers" and other similar books, not to mention the recent biographies of Blackmun and O'Connor by Linda Greenhouse and Joan Biskupic, respectively. But, as teased before its release, the book offers many details about the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito that I had never heard before. Indeed, the details that are intresting and new include all the behind the scenes action on these nominations and those further past. It is fascinating stuff.