Writing Supreme Court Biography: A Single Lens View Of A Nine-Sided Image

Abstract

Writing Supreme Court Biography: A Single Lens View Of A Nine-Sided Image Stephen J. Wermlel “Is yours a judicial biography?” people inquire about my biography-in-progress of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. There is a strange aura about Chief Justice William Rehnquist warmly greeted Justice and Mrs. William J. Brennan, Jr., at the unveiling cer­ emony ofJustice Brennan’s portrait “judicial biography”—a mix of curiosity and awethatis more often reserved for sightings of rare birds or triple plays. For reasons I may never fully understand, much of the mystery quickly fades when I respond that my hope is to cover Justice Brennan’s entire life, not merely his seven years as a judge in New Jersey and his thirty-four years as a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. There have been myriad reactions during the eight years that I have worked part-time on the authorized biography of Justice Brennan. Some have barely been able to disguise their feelings. “I hope you aren’t going to write a hagiography,” said Harvard Law School Pro­ fessor Charles Fried when informed of my project during his tenure as Solicitor General ofthe United States. Others, although no less disparaging than Fried of Justice Brennan’s constitutional view, have seemed more gra­ cious; ChiefJustice William Rehnquist on one occasion threw an arm around my shoulder and another around Justice Brennan’s and remarked, “Ifit isn’t Boswell and his subject.” Most inquirers have simply been fasci­ nated by the process ofwriting a biography of a Supreme Court Justice andby the difficulties and problems that one encounters. That pro- 10 JOURNAL 1994 ChiefJustice EarlWarren oftenlunched at MiltonKronheim’s luncheonclub andwasjoinedby otherJusticesincluding William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall. Justice Brennan’s influence on and close relationship with ChiefJustice Warren afforded Brennan many opportunities to influence events in a way beyond his standing as one ofnine Justices. cess is the subject of this essay. Staying In Focus One ofthe most difficult problems in writ­ ing Supreme Courtbiographyis deciding what the focus of the book will be and keeping it constant. Is the biography to be simply an account of a particular era in Supreme Court history, or is it to be something more? What makes itbiography, not simply Supreme Court history? The answers to these questions may seem self-evident, but their resolution is not always handled with success or dispatch. It is not uncommon to find biographers in other fields very much absorbed with a broader picture than the life they are chronicling. David McCullough, author of Truman,1 explained his goal, “I’m trying to look deeper into the heart of America by looking into the life and times of this one man.”2 Supreme Courtbiographers, however, have sometimes been accused oflooking too deeply into the heart of the Court. Reviewers criti­ cized Professor Bernard Schwartz and his massive volume, Super Chief, 3 for offering too much detail about the Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, and too little insight into Warren as a Justice and leader. Among the many reviews was one by Judge Ruggero Aldisert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who wrote: A biography is a history of an individual’s life told by another, and both the book’s title and size sug­ gest a detailed examination of Warren’s life as Chief Justice. But after you work through the pages, you realize that this book does not qualify as an account of Warren’s WRITING SUPREME COURT BIOGRAPHY 11 life. . . Rather, what emerges from the author’s prodigious research is only a summary: a summary of court calendars that strains the reader’s attention as much as studying an outdated railroad timetable ... the book’s most glaring disappointment is its failure to inquire into how War­ ren functioned as a judge: how he decided cases.4 Professor John Jeffries has addressed this concern in the preface to his new biography of Justice Lewis Powell.5 While Jeffries, like Schwartz, provides extensive narrative ofthe behind-the-scenes evolution of important cases, he explains that “the decisions in these areas are especiallyrevealingofthe...