The center holds

In The Center Holds, James E. Simon provides the first behind-the-scenes look at the private deliberations and deep disagreements of the justices of the Rehnquist Court at a critical juncture in the history of the modern Supreme Court. But more than that, he gives us the inside story of a conservative judicial revolution that failed. Simon focuses on four crucial areas of civil rights and liberties - racial discrimination, abortion, criminal law, and First Amendment freedoms - to chronicle the most intense confrontations between the old liberal order and the emerging conservative majority. He takes us into the courtroom where the cases were argued, into the closed conferences where they were fiercely debated, and into the justices' private chambers where strong personalities and wills often collided. In fascinating detail, Simon shows that it was the internal dynamic among the justices - and their desire to stake out independent positions - that ultimately discouraged the wholesale revolution that Reagan, Bush, and Rehnquist hoped to achieve. This is a compelling, behind-the-scenes account of how the justices fought - sometimes diplomatically, sometimes with bare-knuckled determination - for the soul of the Court, and of how, in the end, the center held.

First sentence: The case of Brenda Patterson, a black woman who charged that she had been harassed and subsequently fired from her job with a North Carolina credit union because of her race, was argued before the Rehnquist Court in February 1988 and reargued eight months later.

Year

1995

Language

English

Publisher

Touchstone

Editions

3

Pages

336

ISBN

9780684870434

Data source: Wikidata