Book Review: "Nine Black Robes" by Joan Biskupic

 

*Spoiler alert!*

4/5 stars

Because this book is not written in the most optimistic of tones, upon finishing it I had to take some time to digest its findings before I wrote this review. Mindfulness and deep breathing were also required.

Nine Black Robes, by knowledgeable court reporter Joan Biskupic, is a historic look at the Supreme Court’s dramatic swing to the right. One could be forgiven for thinking that this shift seemed to happen more recently, but Biskupic reveals that the Court has been for decades moving rightward incrementally. The culmination of decades of judicial appointments—at the high court and lower courts alike—influenced by conservative legal groups, such as the Federalist Society, was the striking down of the 50-year-old precedent of Roe v Wade that protected a woman’s constitutional right to make decisions about her reproductive life.

(You have to laugh, otherwise you are going to cry. I am fun at parties.)

Notwithstanding whether or not one feels that couching the right to abortion within the constitutional right to privacy was the right way to go to protect this right from legal challenges, this right is gone. As a woman, I am definitely— and I feel, justifiably! — biased in feeling that my bodily autonomy is at risk. Despite my not wanting children, the reasoning used to overturn 50 years of legal precedent—in law, this is known as stare decisis—puts other precedents in areas like contraceptive access and LGBTQ+ rights at risk and should be setting off all the alarm bells. All of them.

“No one should be confident this majority is done with its work.”

 

Biskupic takes us back a few decades to give context to our current horrifying moment by looking at how individual justices, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, tried to balance and temper the shifting ideological currents within the Supreme Court. Not a liberal by any means, John Roberts definitely comes out in this book as the more reasonable of the ideological conservative justices. (*shudders*) Appointed to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush, his primary motivation over the years was to protect the reputation of the Supreme Court as an impartial arbiter of justice.

As of September 2022, a Gallup survey found that only 40% of the country approved of the job the Court was doing. I looked for more recent results, finding an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll done on the one-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v Wade, and it found a 39% approval. Throwing in the recent ethics scandals surrounding Justices Thomas and Alito, no one should be surprised the public has little confidence in the highest court in the land.

So, I think it’s safe to say that John Roberts has lost most of his deal-making power with the right-wing of the Court and has failed to preserve its reputation as an impartial arbiter of legal disputes on questions from free speech to religion and minority and womens’ rights.

After reading Nine Black Robes, I have come out angry, but not particularly shaken. Perhaps I’ve become a bit cynical over the years, but the overall picture Biskupic presents to readers is fairly bleak.

However, I am not suggesting any one of us give up. This book issues a call to action by all. It’s now or never! Vote, tell your friends and family to vote, and speak out to protect your rights.

Happy reading!

--BookOwl