Examines the court history and the life of William Brennan, champion of free speech and public access to information, and widely considered the most influential Supreme Court justice of the twentieth century.
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A Revelatory life of the supreme court's greatest liberal and preeminent strategist, based on unprecedented access to Brennan and his coveted "case histories"Justice Brennan is a sweeping and revealing insider look at Court history and the life of William Brennan, widely considered the most influential Supreme Court justice of the twentieth century.Before his death, Brennan granted coauthor Stephen Wermiel access to a trove of materials not available to the public until 2017. Wermiel also conducted more than sixty hours of interviews with Brennan. No biographer has enjoyed this kind of access to a Supreme Court Justice.Justice Brennan makes public for the first time the contents of what Jeffrey Toobin calls "a coveted set of documents": Brennan's case histories, in which he recorded the strategizing behind major battle of the past half century, including Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, the death penalty, obscenity law, and the constitutional right to privacy. Revelations on a more intimate scale include how Brennan refused to hire female clerks even as he wrote groundbreaking women's rights decisions; his complex stance as a justice and a Catholic; and new details on his unprecedented working relationship with Chief Justice Earl Warren. This riveting information will cement Brennan's reputation as an epic playmaker of the Court's most liberal era.
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