I decided to read this book on the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Constitution during my days in jury duty. However, I only served 2½ days and a fair portion of that was in voir dire (not waiting in the jury assembly room), so I only read limited amounts. One good thing that came of my short stint as a juror who never was a juror (the prosecution struck me twice from juries) was finding out that Elliott Bay Books gives people serving jury duty a 20% discount if you show them your badge when you pay. That’s a hell of a deal and I took great advantage of it. Sadly, my stack of unread books is growing way out of proportion of my ability to read them. But I digress… I am to review this book by Tinsley Yarbrough.
First off, I think the book’s subject matter is too broad to be effective. Ninety percent of what the U.S. Supreme Court does is related to the Constitution. I’m not exactly sure what I was looking for in this book but I finished a lot of it by skimming repetitive, long, dry sections. About all I came away with is that the Rehnquist court has not begun an all out assault on everything liberals hold dear. However, they are frequently whittling away at important protections we enjoy as citizens, less frequently acting as buffers against the tyranny of the majority from Congress and the chutzpah of the executive. Also, as the Rehnquist court had another five years to go at the time of publication (2000) I think Yarbrough missed out on a significant chunk of the court’s work. What may not have been an all out assault still slowly and inexorably is reaching the same position.
Chapters 1 and 2 cover the background and confirmation of the various justices that make up the Rehnquist court, and also includes some of the background machinations between the justices. Despite it’s lack of policy analysis, I found the second chapter on the inner workings of the court to be the most informative. I’ve read in real time the decisions of the court, so the succeeding chapters wouldn’t provide a lot of new information. I expected them to pull things together and show trends, but this early chapter had information to which I was not previously privy. Still, it’s use is limited as I don’t practice before the court, nor do I see myself becoming a court-watcher to the degree where I could use such insights to predict outcomes.
The following chapters cover government power, the double standard of strict scrutiny (by previous courts) of economic regulation but laissez faire treatment of non-economic protections. unenumerated rights, religion, freedom of expression, criminal justice, and equal protection. Other than the double standard chapter, I learned little. Unfortunately, Yarbrough buried detailed trend-spotting among reams of case analysis. I like the format taught by my 7th grade English teacher: tell us what you are going to tell us, tell us, then summarize what you told us. Yarbrough doesn’t really do that. I found the case analysis excessive. I could go to other sources for individual case analysis. What I would dearly love is to see how it fits together, I didn’t get that. Not that the case analysis is incorrect or bad. Just not interesting to me.
In the end, I didn’t come away with any sense of relief that the Rehnquist court is in good hands. It seems that many of the conservative justices, while well-intended, are looking for black and white certainty where it doesn’t exist. If the constitution were black and white, needing no interpretation, then the Supreme Court would be unnecessary. But no text contains no ambiguity. The more you legislate all details, the less you lose track of broad principles. The more focus on broad principles, the less detail is specified. When the details (legislation promulgated by Congress and the states, and regulations by the executive) seems at odds with the broad principles in the constitution, the conservative wing seems to allow it because of the inherent ambiguity of the broad principles and their disdain for court-imposed legislation. Yarbrough just doesn’t really seem to put it all together in the book, either on the big trend or on any of the individual topics.
Title: The Rehnquist court and the Constitution
Author: Tinsley E. Yarbrough
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 272 p.
Publication date: 2000
ISBN-10: 0-19-510346-7
Subject: United States Supreme Court
Subject: Rehnquist, William H., 1924-
Subject: Judicial review — United States
Subject: Law and politics
LC classification: KF8742. Y37 2000
