The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made
Probing ... Blending legal analysis of cases such as Korematsu and a handful of others with short profiles of the members of the court, Sloan probes the justices’ motivations and shortcomings as he examines the institution’s inner workings ... While Sloan makes a compelling case, additional context illuminating the broader history of the judicial branch would have painted a more complete picture of the justices’ actions ... FDR’s friendships with the justices, though problematic, appear more benign than Sloan’s portrayal. What Sloan adeptly explores, however, is the key question of whether the president swayed the justices to rule in his favor ... More convincing when attributing the court’s uneven legacy to wartime hysteria ... Sloan’s thoughtful book will better prepare the nation.
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A balanced assessment of the wartime court ... Mr. Sloan’s historical scholarship is impressive, but his attempts to find present-day relevance are not ... Mr. Sloan ends the book by claiming that the Roosevelt court, for all its deficiencies, held to “constitutional guarantees of liberty and equality” and that its legacy is now “under fire.” The book doesn’t come close to supporting that conclusion.
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A wide-ranging legal history that shows that the Supreme Court is never truly divorced from the politics of the day.
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