Linda Greenhouse QUOTES

1 " The political scientist Robert A. Dahl observed more than a half century ago that the Supreme Court “is an essential part of the political leadership,” part of the “dominant political alliance. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

2 " Robert Dahl’s assessment of the Court’s role in the political system is from his article “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker,” Journal of Public Law 6 (1957) 279–95. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

3 " It was always about abortion. (185) "

― Linda Greenhouse , Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court

4 " In fact, only six days later, with Chief Justice Marshall not participating, the Court avoided a possible constitutional confrontation. Voting 5–0 in Stuart v. Laird (1803), the justices upheld Congress’s repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, a move some historians see as reflecting the Court’s unwillingness to test the full dimensions of the power it had just claimed for itself. More than half a century would pass before the Supreme Court again declared an act of Congress unconstitutional. That was the Dred Scott decision of 1857 (Scott v. Sandford), invalidating the Missouri Compromise and holding that Congress lacked authority to abolish slavery in the territories. That notorious decision, a step on the road to the Civil War, was perhaps not the best advertisement for judicial review. But since then, the Court has lost its early reticence. It has declared acts of Congress unconstitutional more than 150 times. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

5 " The Constitutional Convention quickly agreed to the proposal of Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia for a national government of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. Randolph’s resolution “that a national Judiciary be established” passed unanimously. Debating and defining the powers of Congress in Article I and of the president in Article II consumed much of the delegates’ attention and energy. Central provisions of Article III were the product of compromise and, in its fewer than five hundred words, the article left important questions unresolved. Lacking agreement on a role for lower courts, for example, the delegates simply left it to Congress to decide how to structure them. The number of justices remained unspecified. Article III itself makes no reference to the office of chief justice, to whom the Constitution (in Article I) assigns only one specific duty, that of presiding over a Senate trial in a presidential impeachment. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

6 " The convention debated at length over how the members of the Supreme Court should be selected, eventually settling on nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate. By providing that federal judges “shall hold their offices during good Behaviour,” the delegates intended to protect judicial independence. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

7 " Although the delegates appear to have assumed that the federal courts would exercise some form of judicial review over federal and state laws, Article III says nothing explicit on the subject. It states in broad terms that the federal courts’ judicial power “shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

8 " In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity, "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

9 " courts may exercise jurisdiction: cases between states; cases between a state and citizens of another state, or between citizens of different states; “controversies to which the United States shall be a party”; admiralty and maritime disputes; cases involving ambassadors and other foreign diplomats; and cases between a state or its citizens and the government or residents of a foreign state. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

10 " In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity,” is how O’Connor summarized the core of the argument for the law school’s position. She left little doubt that she had been persuaded not only "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

11 " Opinions are announced in open court immediately before the start of the day’s arguments. The justice who has written the majority opinion delivers a brief summary. A dissenting justice who feels particularly strongly might follow with a summary of the dissent. The statements that justices make from the bench are not part of the official opinion, but the few points that a justice might choose to emphasize from a long opinion can be illuminating for those present. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

12 " For a recent citation of John Marshall’s famous line about the Court’s “province and duty” to “say what the law is,” see the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, invalidating an act of Congress that stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases brought by detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy said that “[t]o hold the political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will… would permit a striking anomaly in our tripartite system of government, leading to a regime in which Congress and the President, not this Court, say ‘what the law is’” [citing Marbury]. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

13 " For the Supreme Court specifically, Article III makes a distinction between “original” and “appellate” jurisdiction—between the Supreme Court as a court of first resort for cases involving states or foreign diplomats, and the Court as the recipient of appeals from lower courts in all other cases. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

14 " Once the Constitution was ratified, Congress quickly turned to the task of setting up a court system within the Article III framework. The Judiciary Act of 1789, often called the First Judiciary Act, established two tiers of lower courts: thirteen district courts that followed state lines, each with its own district judge, and three circuit courts, for the Eastern, Middle, and Southern Circuits. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

15 " For illustrations and analysis of the ways in which Justices have shifted over time from their original ideological positions, see the article by Lee Epstein and her co-authors, “Ideological Drift Among Supreme Court Justices: Who, When, and How Important?” Northwestern Law Review Colloquy 101 (2007): 127–31. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

16 " Scholars regard the relationship between the Supreme Court and public opinion as elusive. Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, two leaders in the empirical study of judicial behavior, titled an article: “Does Public Opinion Influence the Supreme Court? Possibly Yes (But We’re Not Sure Why).” The article surveyed the political science literature on the question, much of it inconclusive and contradictory. At best, the authors conclude, there seems to be an association between the Court and public opinion, but not enough evidence to “make the leap from association to causality,” that is, to prove that public opinion actually influences the Court. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

17 " The examples center around the existence of a conflict among the lower federal courts or the state courts on “an important federal question. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

18 " But the Judiciary Act did not provide for judges to staff the circuit courts. Instead, the circuits would be staffed during their two annual sittings by two Supreme Court justices and one district judge. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

19 " So the justices could plausibly assume that the decision they were about to hand down would meet with general public approval—as in fact it initially did, before the abortion issue became entangled, later in the 1970s, with partisan politics and the rise of the religious Right. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction

20 " The political reaction against Roe v. Wade built slowly. The first justice to join the Court after the January 1973 decision was John Paul Stevens, named by President Gerald Ford in December 1975. Yet remarkably enough, the nominee was not asked a single question about abortion during his confirmation hearing. If the senators’ questions during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing provide a reliable window onto the country’s law-related concerns, then it is reasonable to conclude that abortion had not yet become a national political issue nearly three years after the Court’s decision. "

― Linda Greenhouse , The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction