Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court

by Ilya Shapiro, Fred Stella (Read by)

Overview

The brutal confirmation battles we saw over Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are symptoms of a larger problem with our third branch of government, a problem that began long before Kavanaugh, Merrick Garland, Clarence Thomas, or even Robert Bork: the courts’ own self-corruption, aiding and abetting the expansion of federal power.

Ilya Shapiro, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies, takes readers inside the unknown history of fiercely partisan judicial nominations and explores reform proposals that could return the Supreme Court to its proper constitutional role. Confirmation battles over justices will only become more toxic and unhinged as long as the Court continues to ratify the excesses of the other two branches of government and the parties that control them. Only when the Court begins to rebalance constitutional order, curb administrative overreach, and return power back to the states will the bitter partisan war to control the judiciary finally end.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781713523734
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/22/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ilya Shapiro is the director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Shapiro is the co-author of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and New York Times Online. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, including CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision and Telemundo, The Colbert Report, PBS NewsHour, and NPR. Shapiro has testified before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 300 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and has been an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School. He is also the chairman of the board of advisors of the Mississippi Justice Institute, and a member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 2015, National Law Journal named him to its 40 under 40 list of “rising stars.” Before entering private practice, Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School (where he became a Tony Patiño Fellow). He lives in northern Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

"Supreme Disorder is a strikingly original work by one of the country's sharpest legal minds on our manifestly broken judicial appointment process. Ilya doesn't just diagnose the problem and prescribe solutions; he offers a refreshingly balanced history of our nation's most august institution. A must read for anyone interested in the Supreme Court."
—MIKE LEE, Republican senator from Utah

"A remarkably concise, even-handed, highly accessible, well-researched, deftly written account of every Supreme Court nominee of every president from George Washington to today. An indispensable resource for understanding our constitutional history and how we got to where we are with judicial nominations. Anyone with any interest in constitutional law needs to read this book. I will be recommending it to my students.”

—RANDY E. BARNETT, professor, Georgetown University Law Center, and author of Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People

"With aging justices, the membership of the Supreme Court is certain to soon change, possibly along with its ideological balance-setting the stage for confirmation fights every bit as heated as our most recent ones. Ilya Shapiro has written the essential guide for these times, helping us understand how we got here and offering solutions for a better way. Mandatory reading now, and a comprehensive reference you will want to keep nearby to consult in real-time as the battles over the shape and future of our most prestigious institution unfold."
—JAN CRAWFORD, chief legal correspondent, CBS News, and author of Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States

"In this engaging and insightful history of the pitched battles over Supreme Court nominations since America's earliest days, Ilya Shapiro shows how the confirmation process went awry-and why only the Court itself, by checking the other branches and issuing rulings that will be perceived as legitimate, can fix it."

—ADAM WINKLER, law professor, UCLA, and member of the board of directors of the American Constitution Society and the Brennan Center for Justice

From the Publisher