Beyond the Bottom Line: The Value of Judicial Biography

Abstract

Beyond the Bottom Line: The Value of Judicial Biography Melvin I. Urofsky (bio) Melvin I. Urofsky Melvin I. Urofsky is professor of constitutional law at Virginia Commonwealth University and chairman of the Society’s Board of Editors. Endnotes 1. Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge (Knopf, 1994); Roger K. Newman, Hugo Black: A Biography (Pantheon, 1994). 2. Tinsley Yarbrough, Judicial Enigma: The First Justice Harlan (Oxford University Press, 1995); Laura Kalman, Abe Fortas: A Biography (Yale University Press, 1990); Mark V Tushnet, Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961–1991 (Oxford University Press, 1997); and John Jeffries, Jr., Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (Scribner’s, 1994). 3. See, among many others, G. Edward White, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self (Oxford University Press, 1993), and Philippa Strum, Brandeis: Beyond Progressivism (University Press of Kansas, 1993). 4. There have already been several books on Justice Brennan, including Kim Isaac Eisler, A Justice for All (Simon & Schuster, 1993) and W. Wat Hopkins, Mr. Justice Brennan and Freedom of Expression (Praeger, 1991). Works on current sitting Justices include Donald E. Boles, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, Judicial Activist (Iowa State University Press, 1987); Sue Davis, Justice Rehnquist and the Constitution (Princeton University Press, 1989); Nancy Maveety, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: Strategist on the Supreme Court (Rowan & Littlefield, 1996); and Jane Mayer, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (Houghton Mifflin, 1994). 5. Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (4 vols., 1916–1919). 6. Alpheus T. Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (Viking, 1946); William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (Simon & Schuster, 1964); and Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (Viking, 1956). 7. Katharine Graham, Personal History (Knopf, 1997). 8. Stephen J. Field, Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California, with Other Sketches (1893). 9. David J. Danelski and Joseph S. Tulchin, eds., The Autobiographical Notes of Charles Evans Hughes (Harvard University Press, 1973). 10. The Douglas autobiography consists of three volumes, Of Men and Mountains (Harper & Brothers, 1950); Go East, Young Man: The Early Years (Random House, 1974); and The Court Years, 1939–1975 (Random House, 1980). 11. Mark DeWolfe Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Shaping Years, 1841–1870 and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Proving Years, 1870–1882 (Harvard University Press, 1957, 1963). In addition, Howe published several volumes and articles of correspondence between Holmes and men such as Frederick Pollock and Harold Laski. 12. Alexander M. Bickel, Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis: The Supreme Court at Work (Harvard University Press, 1957). 13. Frankfurter to Brandeis, 20 February 1940; Brandeis to Frankfurter, 21 February 1940, in Melvin I. Urofsky and David W. Levy, eds., “Half Brother, Half Son”: The Letters of Louis D. Brandeis to Felix Frankfurter (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 627. My own view is that Frankfurter feared he could not control the independent Mason the way he believed he would be able to influence people he personally chose for the task. 14. J. Woodford Howard, Jr., “Alpheus T. Mason and the Art of Judicial Biography,” 8 Constitutional Commentary 41 (1991). 15. The papers as well as transcripts of the discussions are gathered in “Symposium; National Conference on Judicial Biography,” 70 New York University Law Review 485 (1995). 16. Richard A. Posner, “Judicial Biography,” 70 New York University Law Review 502, 509 (1995). 17. Id. 18. Id. at 503. 19. Id. at 507–08. 20. Richard A. Posner, Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 21. “Transcript [of Discussion],” 70 New York University Law Review 556, 562, 572 (1995). 22. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 62 (1936). 23. See, for example, Daniel M. Berman, A Bill Becomes A Law: Congress Enacts Civil Rights Legislation, 2d ed. (Macmillan, 1966). 24. Robert Litwak, Detente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969–1976 (Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Richard C. Thornton, The Nixon-Kissinger Years: Reshaping America’s Foreign Policy (Paragon House, 1989). 25. Bruce A. Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection (Oxford University Press, 1982). 26. Melvin I. Urofsky, Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and Vinson, 1941–1953 (University of South Carolina Press, 1997...