“Ask the Author” with Jan Crawford Greenburg
Jan Crawford Greenburg has generously agreed to answer questions in this space later in the week about her much-discussed new book, Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court. If you’ve read the book and have questions you’d like to ask Jan, please leave them as comments to this post or e-mail them to me directly here.
If you haven’t read the book but would like to know more about it, see this review in the L.A. Times by David J. Garrow or this one by the New York Times’s Michiko Kakutani.
I was struck by how much insider access you seem to have had, particularly into the Harriet Miers debacle. Did you have access to inside information as events were unfolding or were you told about events afterward?
Comment by Jacques McKenzie — January 30, 2007 @ 11:56 am
You have said that you were able to speak to nine current and former justices, including retired Justice O’connor. Who is the one justice who wouldn’t speak with you?
Comment by Jacob Berlove — January 30, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
Thanks for an interesting book. Hope I can finish it before you start answering questions.
1. Do you believe that Rehnquist, knowing he was going to die, manipulated O’Connor into resigning so that Bush would have two nominees?
2. It’s obvious that your book would not have been the same without the Blackmun papers. Is it just his packrat nature that makes his papers more important than Marshall’s? Do you think your book and other scholarship based on the papers is an argument for or against early release of justices’ papers?
3. You, like many commentators, mostly ignore the success of the conservative counterrevolution in criminal law. But from the vantage point of your book, probably the most interesting cases are the counterrevolution within the counterrevolution, Crawford v. Washington and Apprendi. Why didn’t you discuss them more?
4. In the federalism wing of the conservative agenda, the dissenting opinions get more and more heated (if I remember correctly) through the Florida Secondary cases. Yet you seem to stop with Lopez. Why didn’t you discuss this area more?
5. The Rehnquist Court is known for its belief in judicial supremacy, epitomized by City of Boerne v. Flores. Why didn’t you discuss this area more? Do you think Roberts’ “judicial modesty” will change the Court’s direction, or will it disappear as power corrupts?
Roger Friedman
Comment by r.friedman — January 31, 2007 @ 8:44 am