BY RAY DUER

In a new book about the inner workings of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a noted court-watcher, recounts the court’s rightward shift during the last quarter-century. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court offers detailed vignettes of the justices, insightful anecdotes, and a keen perspective of the events surrounding the conservative push for control of the court.

While Toobin’s last book, Too Close to Call, overtly advanced his views on the disputed 2000 election, the writing in The Nine is surprisingly circumspect—as well as candid, sharp, smart, and funny. The story does not shock or surprise, but Toobin’s book illuminates one of the few remaining dark corners in Washington.

Introducing the Justices
Using the image of the casket being carried up the steps of the United States Supreme Court building for the farewell ceremony for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Toobin introduces the justices, who are standing in reverse order of seniority on the hallowed steps of the Supreme Court. First is Stephen Breyer, who maintains “a gregarious good nature” and “had just turned sixty-seven but looked a decade younger.” Three steps above Breyer stands Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another Clinton appointee and ardent liberal, whose influence would soon diminish with the appointment of two conservative jurists to the court.

Next is Clarence Thomas, a man who the journalist Toobin notes “openly, even fervently, despised the press.” While Stephen Breyer has a youthful look, “Thomas had turned into an old man.” Souter would have been next, had his eighteenth-century lifestyle not slowed communication with him. Noting his lack of an answering machine, fax machine, cell phone, or e-mail, Toobin is fascinated by Souter’s idiosyncrasies, which make for some of the best reading in the book.

Anthony Kennedy is also unable to attend, and his absence is notable because he is in China. Long thought to be the “most conventional, even boring, of men,” Kennedy had not only disappointed many Republicans with his leftward movement on the court, but infuriated them further by his willingness to cite foreign legal systems in his opinions. Antonin Scalia, the “rhetorical force of the counterrevolutionary guard,” stood next. Hailed as a hero by the right, Scalia is “lost and lonely,” Toobin tells us. But Toobin deeply respects Scalia’s clear and consistent ideology, especially with respect to recent decisions that overturn precedents implicitly, instead of explicitly as Scalia would prefer.

Sandra Day O’Connor stands above Scalia, and in this book, she stands above everybody as the justice that “dominates the Court.” Above her, the most senior of the justices, John Paul Stevens was “respected by his colleagues, if not really known to them.” Carrying the casket with other former law clerks of Rehnquist, John Roberts had the day before been nominated by President Bush to succeed Rehnquist as chief justice, and he would go forward with the recently appointed Justice Alito to magnify the conservative movement on the court.

A New Form of Court Reporting
The Supreme Court is unique in that its news coverage tends to be limited to analysis of public events and published opinions. When a reporter covers the Supreme Court, he or she writes about the background of the case, the oral argument, and the outcome. Rarely is there any mention of the personalities that decided the case, other than in relation to the liberal or conservative bloc that either won or lost. This prism of politicization has become commonplace in coverage of the Supreme Court. Now, with the advent of Toobin and other journalists, such as Linda Greenhouse, who have gained more access and have pushed for a closer view of events inside the justices’ chambers, the Supreme Court is going through a process of personalization.

End of an Illusion
This book is about change: change in the court’s collective ideological perspective, change in the justices’ individual jurisprudence, and change in the makeup of the Supreme Court itself. But more than that, this book is about demythologizing the Supreme Court and its justices. Toobin’s great contribution in The Nine is dispelling the “magnificent illusion…that the Supreme Court operates at a higher plane than the mortals who toil on the ground.” ]]>