Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to Clinton

This totally revised and updated classic is a comprehensive and accessible history of the first 108 members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Henry J. Abraham, one of the nation's preeminent scholars of the judicial branch, addresses the vital questions of why individual justices were nominated to the highest court, how their nominations were received by legislators of the day, whether the appointees ultimately lived up to the expectations of the American public, and the legacy of their jurisprudence on the development of American law and society. Among Abraham's numerous observations is that fully one-fifth of the Supreme Court's members were viewed as failures by the presidents who appointed them. The text is also enhanced by photographs of every justice from 1789 to 1999.