I am a Supreme Court junkie.
I lamented the retirement of Linda Greenhouse. I perk right up when I hear that a report from Nina Totenberg is coming up on NPR, and actually have an autographed picture of her. Wait, maybe it’s aging SCOTUS analyst hotties that I’m actually jonesing for! Every June I pore through the news looking for analyses of the crush of decisions that come out at the end of the term.
At its best, the SCOTUS represents the highest form of philosophical debate in this country and probably the world. At its worst, it reveals the role that politics plays in distorting moral decision making.
I’m in the middle of Jeffrey Toobin’s book on the Rehnquist court, a court that included an 11 year stretch without a change in the lineup. It takes the old conventional wisdom (Thomas is an isolated crank, Kennedy’s the swing vote, O’Connor is the pragmatic center, etc.) and goes much further, really fleshing out who these people are and how they think. Although he still does judge Thomas rather harshly, as a ghostly, underqualified and ultimately pitiful presence on the court. [update 12-Nov: Finished the book. Alito doesn’t fare well either, and from that you might draw some partisanship on the part of Toobin, but I think he’s balanced and he certainly shows affection for moderate conservatives like O’Connor. A great read!]
The 2008-2009 term started this week. Here are some useful resources:
PBS NewsHour Supreme Court Watch
New York Times Supreme Court coverage
Dahlia Lithwick’s Supreme Court Dispatches at Slate
But for a down-and-dirty raw data view, the best is probably:
The Oyez Project — countless resources, but most amazing are their audio recordings, with synchronized transcripts, of the oral arguments. For example, here’s the oral arguments in Boumediene v. Bush from Dec 2007, the case that upheld habeus corpus. And here’s Neal Katyal’s argument in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Scalia wisecracks! Breyer maneuvering! Oh my!