The Court at War: Fdr, His Justices, and the World They Made -- Cliff Sloan, Hardcover

The inside story of how one president forever altered the most powerful legal institution in the country, with consequences that endure today

By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices--the most by any president except George Washington--and handpicked the chief justice.

But the wartime Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president.

The Court at War explores this pivotal period. It provides a cast of unforgettable characters in the justices--from the mercurial, Vienna-born intellectual Felix Frankfurter to the Alabama populist Hugo Black; from the western prodigy William O. Douglas, FDR's initial pick to be his running mate in 1944, to Roosevelt's former attorney general and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson.

The justices' shameless capitulation and unwillingness to cross their beloved president highlight the dangers of an unseemly closeness between Supreme Court justices and their political patrons. But the FDR Court's finest moments also provided a robust defense of individual rights, rights the current Court has put in jeopardy. Sloan's intimate portrait is a vivid, instructive tale for modern times.

Author: Cliff Sloan
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 09/19/2023
Pages: 512
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.65lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.80d
ISBN: 9781541736481

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/31/2023
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2023

About the Author
Cliff Sloan is an American diplomat who served as Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure at the United States Department of State. Sloan is currently a Dean's Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center.