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The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court ::
In retrospect, Bob Woodward’s carreer seems to have been all but defined for him after All the President’s Men was published. Since then he’s written some book or another about every single President, and has in many respects become the go-to guy when it comes to spinning a compelling tale about the people who run the political institutions in in Washington, DC. He’ll probably be remembered just as much for the work he did after his first book as he was for All the President’s Men itself. That’s no small feat and I say, Good for him.
But that doesn’t mean that everything he’s written has been a worthwhile read. I mean sure, if I’m reading Woodward I’ll almost invariably come across some passage, some description of a scene that seems a little too secret, a little too sensitive, and I’ll find myself asking, Wait a minute, was I supposed to read that? That’s always fun. But still, when his work comes to rely on that kind of access (or assumed access) to the professional lives of political figures, the writing becomes almost gimmicky, predictable, and ultimately less interesting and valuable. Which all translates into making his books hard to read.
The Brethren doesn’t quite fall victim to this problem. The book follows the decisions and the internal dynamics of the Supreme Court for five years in the 1970’s, starting in the year that Earl Warren stepped down as Chief Justice and Warren Burger (a Nixon appointee) took his place. As the book progresses we see the Court shift from the political Left to the Center, and ultimatly starts leaning to the Right, as the Center-Right Justices (John-Paul Stevens) and Right-Wing Justices (William Rehnquist) we know today begin to appear. It’s a compelling story. I was able to see (what I felt was) an honest portrayal of highly intelligent people who were forced to constantly strike a balance between their own staunch beliefs and the need to compromise with the other justices in order to develop the opinions of the court. Sometimes the Justices chose to stick to their ideological guns, at other times they would change their opinions unexpectedly. In the case of Justice Blackmun, his internal struggles with abortion and women’s rights and the right to privacy as he was developing his opinion on the Roe v. Wade decision eventually pushed him to support Abortion rights. As a conservative Justice, that was a very unexepected turn for him, and his struggle was so complex and deep, I couldn’t help but think it was real. As I read, I hoped that the story was real, that Woodward’s portrayal wasn’t embellished, that I wasn’t getting served another one of the authors all-access tricks. Because if government did actually function this way, and these sorts of questions were being asked and debated, then I could believe that system does in fact work. In some way or another.
I had a hard time giving myself over entirely to my hope, however. Intertwined with stories such as the one about Blackmun were plenty of typical Woodward tricks, which as I mentioned before, do get tiresome. But more than that, the book tended to focus more on the nature of power and how it was delegated (and fought over) within the Supreme Court. And while I realize that that’s a fundamental reality of life in Washington, Woodward’s focus on it does get to be a little petty and lame. Especially when compared to the deeper, more significant issues that faced not only the Court, but the human beings who are in charge of it as well. However, the strengths of the book far outweigh the weaknesses, and I always found myself interested in continuing to read.
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