Today's Supreme Court justices bristle at the label "politicians in robes," insisting that they operate above the fray of partisan politics. But for the first century of the nation's history, the Court was unmistakably a political institution, both by design and in practice. Justices were fully expected to engage in partisan politics-there was no concern that such engagement would lead to corruption or undue bias-and they remained deeply involved in civic debate and the electoral process while on the bench. In addition to hearing cases in the capital, each justice spent much of his time "riding circuit" and presiding over federal trial courts. On circuit and in Washington, nineteenth-century justices wrote for partisan newspapers, drafted legislation, advised partisan allies, campaigned for colleagues, and even ran for political offices from the bench. Through these political interactions, members of the Court helped shape debates about the Constitution's meaning at a time when most Americans did not believe in judicial supremacy. In this sweeping history, Rachel A. Shelden, one of America's leading voices on the history of the Court, brings readers inside the social and political world of its justices, recovering their essential role in the era's turbulent politics. She also charts shifts at the turn of the twentieth century, when members of the Court and the legal community refashioned the judiciary as an apolitical institution, setting the stage for an increasingly more powerful-and more isolated-modern Court. The Political Supreme Court is required reading for anyone interested in the legal and political underpinnings of today's judicial power.
Rachel A. Shelden is associate professor of history and director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State University. A leading scholar of nineteenth-century America, Shelden is a member of the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice.
"This is the single best book I have read on the history of the US Supreme Court. A remarkable achievement."-Gautham Rao, author of?White Power: Policing American Slavery "Blending commanding research with brisk, accessible writing, Shelden skillfully evokes the political world of the nineteenth-century Supreme Court and explodes the myth that the Court somehow stood above the partisan fray. By illuminating the lives and careers of its justices, both famous and lesser-known, her refreshing narrative demonstrates not only how politics intruded into the Court's work but also how the Court shaped the nation's political order."-Joseph P. Reidy, author of?Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery
