With the moderating, centrist voice of Sandra Day O'Connor now gone from the Supreme Court, a conservative counterrevolution that had been stymied for 20 years has now begun.
So says Jeffrey Toobin in his new book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. His book is about how this counterrevolution developed. It's also a behind-the-scenes look at the court, its recent decisions and the personalities of the justices behind them.
The Nine is based on interviews with justices and their law clerks that were given on a not-for-attribution basis — meaning, in plain language, that Toobin heard stories, opinions and analyses directly from the horses' mouths, but isn't allowed to reveal who said what.
Toobin is senior legal analyst for CNN, staff writer at The New Yorker and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
One of his best-selling books was about the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore — the ruling that stopped the Florida recount in the contested 2000 presidential election.
That decision allowed Florida's certification of Bush's victory to stand — which put Bush over the top in electoral votes, making him president.
In The Nine, Toobin retells the story from the perspective of the court, and comes up with some revealing new stories.
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