Scorpions, Noah Feldman
Scorpions, Noah Feldman
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Scorpions
The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices

Author: Noah Feldman

Narrator: Cotter Smith

Unabridged: 14 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/08/2010

Categories: Nonfiction, History


Synopsis

A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed.

Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius.

They began as close allies and friends of FDR, but the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. Scorpians tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself.

About Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University as well as a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a contributing writer for Bloomberg View.Before joining the Harvard faculty, Feldman was Cecelia Goetz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. In 2004, he was a visiting professor at Yale Law School and a fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center. In 2003, he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law or interim constitution. He served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1998–1999). Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a D. Phil. in Islamic Thought from Oxford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, serving as Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1992, finishing first in his class.He is the author of several books, including Cool War: The Future of Global Competition; the award winning and acclaimed Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Justices; The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State; Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It; and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. With Kathleen Sullivan, he coauthored textbooks on constitutional and first amendment law. He has worked as a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Colleen on January 13, 2023

The cloak of majesty over the Supreme Court is pulled off in this book. The reader is given a birds eye view to the jealousies, pettiness, arrogance, and inner working of the Court during the Roosevelt Court but it could apply to any rime. It focuses on Frankfurter, Black, Douglas, and Jackson and a......more

Goodreads review by Porter on December 27, 2019

FDR was one of America’s great liberal presidents. It only makes sense that he would appoint liberal justices to the Supreme Court. This book is about 4 of those justices (Douglas, Black, Frankfurter, and Jackson). At the core of liberal jurisprudence are judicial restraint and original intent. Er, wa......more

Goodreads review by Jean on April 20, 2014

I loved the quote by one of Frankfurter’s clerks, “They are like nine scorpions in a bottle.” FDR appointed more Supreme Court justices than any other President. He re-made the court through his appointees. Four of them Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William Douglas, and Robert Jackson are among the......more

Goodreads review by Carly on December 20, 2019

Scorpions is a thorough examination of four justices appointed by FDR: Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. The book discusses their educational backgrounds, private lives, rise to the supreme court, and of course their notable decisions while serving. Each of the ju......more

Goodreads review by Kathy on November 04, 2010

Scorpions – the title references a description of the Supreme Court Justices as “nine scorpions in a bottle” – is the story of four widely different justices all appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. These four, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson and William O. Douglas could not have been m......more