David A. Kaplan | The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court's Assault on the Constitution
In the bestsellling tradition of "The Nine" and "The Brethren," David A. Kaplan, the former legal affairs editor of Newsweek, takes us into the secret world of the Supreme Court. He shows how too often the nine justices subvert the role of other branches of government—and how we’ve come to accept that at our peril.
Never before has the Court been more central in American life. It is the nine justices who too often now decide the controversial issues of our time—from abortion and same-sex marriage, to gun control, campaign finance and voting rights. The Court is so crucial that many voters in 2016 made their choice based on whom they thought their presidential candidate would name to the Court. Donald Trump picked Neil Gorsuch—the key decision of his new administration. The new justice Brett Kavanaugh will be even more important, holding the swing vote over so much social policy. Is that really how democracy is supposed to work?
Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and dozens of their law clerks, Kaplan provides fresh details about life behind the scenes at the Court. Clarence Thomas’s simmering rage. Antonin Scalia’s death. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s celebrity. Breyer Bingo. The petty feuding between Gorsuch and the chief justice. And what John Roberts thinks of his critics.
Kaplan presents a sweeping narrative of the justices’ aggrandizement of power over the decades, from Roe v. Wade to Bush v. Gore to Citizens United. But the arrogance of the Court isn’t partisan: Conservative and liberal justices alike are guilty of overreach. Challenging conventional wisdom about the Court’s transcendent power, "The Most Dangerous Branch" is sure to rile both sides of the political aisle.
About the Author
David A. Kaplan was a senior editor and legal affairs correspondent at Newsweek for 20 years; while there, he wrote 24 cover stories on the court and other topics. Later he was a contributing editor at Fortune, where he wrote long-form profiles of Charlie Rose, Howard Schultz, David Geffin, and David Boies, among others. He is the author of the national bestseller The Silicon Boys; an account of the 2000 presidential election, The Accidental President (on which the HBO feature film Recount was based); and Bigger, about the largest sailboat in history, which won the Loeb Award for Best Business Book of 2008.
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