Stephen Wermiel
Auteur van Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion
Werken van Stephen Wermiel
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- 117
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- #168,597
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- 3.7
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There was little in Brennan's early years to suggest the impact his career would have on the country. The son of an Irish immigrant who had made a career in New Jersey politics, Brennan worked hard to obtain an education. Graduation from Harvard Law School led to a job with Newark's preeminent legal firm, followed by wartime service and appointment to the New Jersey state bench. Brennan's background (particularly his Roman Catholicism) and his work in court reform led to his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, where he soon emerged as one of the Court's most prominent liberals in an era characterized by landmark decisions that helped to transform the nation. Though many of these decisions generated a political backlash that shifted the Court to the right and halted further progress, Brennan succeeded in entrenching many of his earlier gains with later decisions that preserved his legacy as a justice.
Well written and based on considerable research, Stern and Wermiel's book fills the longstanding need for a good biography of the justice. Their focus is on his tenure on the Court, as they cover the first fifty years of Brennan's life in a mere seventy pages while devoting the next 450 to his time on the Court and his role in the many decisions in which he participated. The authors' explanation of how these developed is one of the great strengths of the book, as they draw upon numerous interviews and Brennan's extensive collection of personal papers to give an insightful account of how these decisions evolved, an account that emphasizes the role of Brennan's political skills in contributing to his success on the Court. The result is a book that will stand for some time as the standard biography of the great liberal justice and the yardstick by which future studies of Brennan will be measured.… (meer)