''The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court'' is a

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

non-fiction book by legal analyst

Jeffrey Toobin Jeffrey Ross Toobin (; born May 21, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, blogger, and longtime legal analyst for CNN. He left CNN on September 4, 2022. During the Iran–Contra affair, Toobin served as an associate counsel on this investigation ...

. Based in part on exclusive interviews with the justices and former law clerks, Toobin profiles the justices of the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

, the functioning of that institution, and how it has changed over the years. The book covers the years from 1994 to 2005. ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...

'' wrote of the book, "Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. The real power, he argues, belonged to supreme swing-voter

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and th ...

, who decided important cases with what Toobin sees as an almost primal attunement to a middle-of-the-road public consensus. By contrast, he contends, conservative justices

William Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from ...

and

Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectu ...

ended up bitter old men, their rigorous constitutional doctrines made irrelevant by the moderates' compromises." The book spent four months on the ''New York Times'' bestseller list.

References

External links

''New York Times'' review
by David Margolick *
The Nine
' at Amazon.com Supreme Court of the United States 2007 non-fiction books Books by Jeffrey Toobin {{US-poli-book-stub