Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion [Hardcover]

Few Supreme Court justices have had a greater -- and more controversial impact -- on American history than William J. Brennan. Attacked by his opponents as a judicial activist, the decisions he authored over a thirty-four-year career on the Court expanded the rights of Americans, including those of such disadvantaged groups as minorities, criminal defendants, and the poor. Two decades after his retirement, his jurisprudence endures in helping to define our understanding of American law in many areas. Yet until now, Brennan's life and career has never received the degree of biographical attention such contemporaries as Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, and John Marshall Harlan have enjoyed. Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel go far towards rectifying this deficiency with this book, which offers a searching examination of Brennan's life and career.

There was little in Brennan's early years to suggest the impact his career would have on the country. The son of an Irish immigrant who had made a career in New Jersey politics, Brennan worked hard to obtain an education. Graduation from Harvard Law School led to a job with Newark's preeminent legal firm, followed by wartime service and appointment to the New Jersey state bench. Brennan's background (particularly his Roman Catholicism) and his work in court reform led to his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, where he soon emerged as one of the Court's most prominent liberals in an era characterized by landmark decisions that helped to transform the nation. Though many of these decisions generated a political backlash that shifted the Court to the right and halted further progress, Brennan succeeded in entrenching many of his earlier gains with later decisions that preserved his legacy as a justice.

Well written and based on considerable research, Stern and Wermiel's book fills the longstanding need for a good biography of the justice. Their focus is on his tenure on the Court, as they cover the first fifty years of Brennan's life in a mere seventy pages while devoting the next 450 to his time on the Court and his role in the many decisions in which he participated. The authors' explanation of how these developed is one of the great strengths of the book, as they draw upon numerous interviews and Brennan's extensive collection of personal papers to give an insightful account of how these decisions evolved, an account that emphasizes the role of Brennan's political skills in contributing to his success on the Court. The result is a book that will stand for some time as the standard biography of the great liberal justice and the yardstick by which future studies of Brennan will be measured.

This excellent biography provides fascinating detail of the formulation of some of the most significant cases of the 20th century. I've never read a judicial biography that has so much "inside baseball" - and it will be loved by Court junkies. But it's also a crisply written and compelling story of 20th century US politics, intellectual history, religion, and gender relations -- told through the life of a towering figure of American history. Anyone interested in 20th century US history will really enjoy this fine book.

Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel provide an excellent (although very pro) biography of Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. Brennan was one of the longest serving justices in modern history celebrating around forty years on the court. He was in the majority opinions more often than most and was a crucial swing player in Supreme Court politics. If you want a real nitty gritty look at the major cases of the modern era from Baker v. Carr to Roe v. Wade you can see Brennan's influence running throughout. He was the whip of Earl Warren within the Supreme Court authoring many opinions that helped to hold together fragile majorities on a variety of issue. You also get a great look at Brennan's personal life from his time at UPenn and Harvard to his brief tenure as a justice for the Supreme Court of New Jersey. His elevation was largely based upon his youth and his religion which satisfied the political needs of Eisenhower. Overall a very interesting book and well worth the read for those interested in Supreme Court history

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