Pathways to the Us Supreme Court ― From the Arena to the Monastery

As the arbiter of the Constitution, it is presumed that the US Supreme Court decrees "the law of the land" in a fair-minded and even-handed manner. Key decisions in the Court's history have challenged these assumptions, giving way to a greater discussion about how judges are chosen, and the ideological roots from which they rule. This book explores more than two centuries of Supreme Court justice selections, tracking the Court's change from a time when consensus choices were relatively evenly divided between political leaders from "the arena," and judges from "the monastery," to a recent era fraught with controversial presidential appointees to federal positions that have yielded ideologically-influenced administrations of law.

Garrison Nelson is Professor of Political Science, University of Vermont, USA. He is the editor of the seven-volume Committees in the US Congress, 1789-2010 and co-author of The Austin-Boston Connection: Five Decades of House Democratic Leadership. He has been previously published in the American Political Science Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and is President of the New England and Northeastern Political Science Associations.