Supreme Court
Supreme Court (2007) This marvelous four-hour PBS documentary captures key high and low lights of the Court’s multi-century history. A number of professional commentators including Chief Justice Roberts discuss a relatively few key cases. The importance of such personalities as John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes is juxtaposed against dominant themes that often portrayed the Court as being a check on social and economic changes that were transforming the United States.
John Marshall, reflecting his experience in the Revolutionary War, was as commanding in establishing the federal primacy of the Court as was Alexander Hamilton in the area of federal finance. The documentary, after highlighting Marshall’s breakthrough federal precedents, leaves unresolved his challenge of President Jackson over the Cherokee case. In fact, a fortuitous political accommodation over the 1932 nullification crisis defused a Marshall-Jackson showdown that could have severely weakened the Court’s prestige.
Frequently the Court’s ebb and flow on crucial issues is described by focusing on key Court personalities. On civil rights for African Americans, the Court, for generations, had a record that remains an historical embarrassment. On economic matters, the bold positions of the Marshall Court were abandoned for much of the late 19th and early 20th century. Even with the need to simplify complex judicial and political issues, I believe that the presentation brushed over the constitutional issues that prompted the Court to overturn such New Deal legislation as NRA and AAA. Ultimately, the ‘switch in time that saved nine,’ at the time of President Roosevelt’s proposed court-packing legislation, turned principally on Justice Owen Roberts’ personal decision on the West Coast case.
Personally I was surprised by the dominant civil rights role according ex-KKK member Justice Hugo Black. The Black-Frankfurter-Douglas trio was a liberal focal point, while Chief Justice Earl Warren, except for Brown v. Board of Education was cast in a cameo role. Justice Black played a pivotal road in accelerating ‘all deliberate speed’ in school segregation, once its author, Justice Frankfurter, retired.
When President Richard Nixon had an opportunity to ‘shape’ the Court with four nominations, his desire for a conservative Court was moderated by how nominees develop distinct perspectives, once on the Court. One also developed a respect for Sandra Day O’Connor, who provided a balanced voice on a split court.
