The Business of the Supreme Court Revisited John Paul Jones Sixty-eight years ago, Felix Frankfurter and James M. Landis published The Business of the Supreme Court: A Study in the Federal Judi cial System. Its eight chapters originally appeared as articles in the HarvardLaw Review, the first in June of 1925, and the last in April of 1927. When the work afterward emerged as a book, its authors dedicated it to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., acknowledging his twenty-five Terms as a member of the Supreme Court of the United States. My copy of The Business of the Supreme Court has been ill used by time, as have both the validity of its basic assumption and the design ofits research. My copy is thickened by a swollen binding; its curved covers close like a clamshell around pages brown with age and stiff with decay. At some time since its binding, it has been left to the damp; now it is stained, and it smells of mildew. When this book first appeared, as a history oflegislation it epitomized the latest trend in legal scholarship; now, the narrowness of its focus best illustrates its datedness. When first published, its underlying assumption that the Supreme Court’s workload was beyond the Court’s control went unques tioned; now, that assumption is regularly ques tioned. The book is dated and myopic. It is, nevertheless, a classic in the strictest sense. It is elegantly composed and presented. It superbly models a wider-ranging scholarship ofwhich its authors were recognized pioneers. As the early work of scholar-reformers influential in the reshaping of American legal culture, it ought to be of enduring interest to students of social as well as legal history. Felix Frankfurter’s name is surely familiar, but that of James McCauley Landis, his coau thor, is likely less so. When they wrote the book, Frankfurter had been for eleven years a member of the faculty of the Harvard Law School, and Landis, his former student, had returned after graduation to act as Professor Frankfurter’s research assistant and pursue Harvard’s brandnew degree, Doctor of Juridical Science. Frank furter would make his historical mark as the protege of the Progressive leader Justice Louis Brandeis, as advisor to both Roosevelt Presi dents, and eventually, as an often-dissenting Jus tice in the Supreme Court of the United States, most notably during ChiefJustice Earl Warren’s stewardship.1 James McCauley Landis, while perhaps not as famous as his coauthor, played key leadership roles in the New Deal, both in reviving the Federal Trade Commission and in launching the Securities and Exchange Commis sion. At the tender age of thirty-six, Landis became dean ofthe Harvard Law School. Even tually, he would end a distinguished career of public service as a close advisor to President John F. Kennedy.2 The Business of the Supreme Court was well received at its publication. Harold Lasswell wrote in The American Journal ofSociology. That such a book as this should issue from the most famous law school in . the United States is nothing less than 132 1995 JOURNAL an epochal event. It evidences the broadening of research interests on the part of the instructional staff, and this is presumably not without effect upon the actual routine of law train ing. In view of the peculiar depen dence of American polity upon the lawyer, this is truly a matter of national concern.3 From Princeton, John Dickinson wrote that one of the outstanding values of this book was the light it shined on the processes and quality of American legislation. The thoroughness and detail of this account disclose, as would a similar account of the history of any other important branch of legislation, the enormous slowness of our legislative process, and the character of the obstacles it must overcome.4 Edward S. Corwin, never a generous critic, found the work “. . . based on wide research, . . . well arranged and pleasingly written. It suf fers, if anything, from the excess of its virtues.”5 W.P.M. Kennedy, writing for the English His torical Review, was lavish in his praise: The history of the nation seems to pass before us, as we follow...