History of the Supreme Court of the United States. Volume IX: The Judiciary and Responsible Government, 1910-21 [Book Review]

Abstract

When he died in 1974, Alexander Bickel had finished the seven 100-page chapters of this volume of the Holmes Devise Series that cover appointments to the Supreme Court and cases concerning social and economic issues, except race. As a judge's history, concentrating on printed materials and the manuscripts of the Justices, Part One is trenchant and often delightful. Case by case, vignette by vignette, Bickel had no peer for clarity, brevity, shrewd judgments, and wit. Yet unlike his mentor Felix Frankfurter, Bickel rarely stepped back and considered overarching issues of political and constitutional theory, and he made no effort to master post-World War II versions of the history of the so-called Progressive Era. These chapters constitute an authoritative reference work for details, an unself-consciously traditional series of well-crafted set pieces to.be dipped into for specific information, not consulted for broad generalizations or read page by page. There is no Bickel thesis here and little direct questioning of anyone else's thesis, either. On Bickel's account, the Court in these years was just inconsistent sometimes for, sometimes against various sorts of regulations, sometimes deferential to other branches, sometimes assertive of judicial power, sometimes slavishly following precedent, sometimes creative and responsive to new arguments. There were apparently no pronounced trends. Perhaps this was the way the period really was, but Bickel's narrow focus shrouds any possible larger themes from view.

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