Ken Starr Writes a Book: First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life
Sentelle, David B.
Books in Review - "Ken Starr Writes a Book" (no, not about that) First Among Equals The Supreme Court in American Life BY KENNETH W. STARR Warner Books/320 pages/526.95 Reviewed by David B. Sentelle Ken...
...The agony of triumph: Nirvana's sudden, if not quite overnight, success proves bewildering for Cobain...
...As evidence of his thesis, Starr explores over a dozen areas of American life ranging from First Amendment rights of speech and religion, through abortion and affirmative action, to the powers and structures of the states, the federal government, and the various branches thereof...
...Since then, his private practice has regularly taken him to the Supreme Court, and he teaches constitutional law at two distinguished law schools...
...Perhaps the repeated demonstration of the same theme may strike some lay readers as repetitious...
...He was one of Chief Justice Burger's law clerks...
...RONALD REAGAN AND HIS 'CH Peter Hannaford NEW Ronald Reagan and His Ranch THE WESTERN WHITE HOUSE, 1981-1989 By Peter Hannaford The first book to take you inside (and all over) the 688 acres of Ronald Reagan's favorite place, Rancho del Cielo, his "ranch in the sky...
...While the reader may have the distinct impression that this last chapter was appended to an otherwise complete book, we should nonetheless be grateful for that coincidence, given the skill with which Starr demonstrates how that case and his main thesis comport...
...Long-time Reagan associate and chronicler, Peter Hannaford, tells how the Reagans found the ranch, their famous visitors, the major events that took place while they were there and daily life at the Western White house...
...s CULT OF KURT Journals BY KURT COBAIN Riverhead Books/280 pages/$29.95 Reviewed by David Skinner efore he killed himself, Kurt Cobain would joke that of all the merchandising schemes his band Nirvana engaged in, selling their bottled sweat had proven the most lucrative...
...Kurt Cobain was the single most important figure in '90s pop...
...The answer is: an eminently readable and informative one...
...In a factually intense text, I did find one error: in his analysis of Shaw v. Reno, a case involving congressional redistricting in my home state of North Carolina, he refers to the state legislature's drafting of a bizarre twelfth district as designed "to facilitate the election of the state's first elected black member of the House since Reconstruction...
...24.95 Order Today: Toll-free 888/422-3204 Images From the Past, Inc...
...Starr presents persuasively the wider significance of Bork's failed nomination...
...He also shows in specific how differently the flag-burning cases David B. Sentelle is a United States circuit judge...
...Certainly, it surprised me...
...Starr him-self answers that in his preface...
...That which the Framers determined to be the third branch, and which Hamilton supposed to be the least dangerous, has become—at least in its apparent ability to make final decisions—first among equals...
...He served five years as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C...
...A stormy romance and marriage: Kurt and Courtney Love fought like their drugDavid Skinner is an assistant managing editor of The Weekly Standard...
...No, not that subject...
...Nothing gets left out...
...Starr's book presents a detailed, thorough, broad-ranging analysis of that question, along with a candid examination of the voting behavior of individual justices and how much difference the vote of a single justice has often made...
...That said, he does not water down the subject matter—the reader should be prepared to think...
...For a lawyer who makes much of his living arguing before them, his frankness in describing and evaluating the current nine may surprise many readers...
...As he notes, much has been written about the Court under Earl Warren, but relatively little about what has happened under Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist...
...Why do I propose that Starr is uniquely suited to examine this subject...
...Presidents, mostly Republican, who have had the opportunity to appoint judges since then have decried judicial activism...
...Shabby beginnings: the high-school dropout Cobain, tossed from his mother's house, flopped on friends' couches or slept in his car before making it...
...The Warren Court was accused—rightly, Starr says—of activist intervention in the broad range of human society...
...His expo-sure to the post-Warren Court has been as intimate and complete as it could be for anyone outside the justices themselves...
...Making the book more readable and entertaining—and certainly adding to its historical significance—Starr interweaves the broader historical picture with an analysis of how each of the justices on the post-Warren Court have influenced its developments and the historic results of its cases...
...This leaves the question: what role has the post-Warren Supreme Court played in American life...
...Of much broader significance still, Starr presents analyses of the votes and influence of the sitting justices...
...LYN NOFZIGER, long time Reagan aide and advisor "Hannaford, who knows the former President well, traces the ranch from its earliest days and brings it to life as it was when Ronald Reagan was President...
...For it was on these two sheets of paper that the late grunge star took notes for his driver's license exam, listing speed limits, parking rules, and the symbols for such important road signs as "two-way traffic," "merge...
...After that, when I did him the disservice of swearinghim in as independent counsel in the Whitewater matter, he conducted an investigation that resulted in two cases ultimately reviewed by the high court justices...
...He is professional enough to feel comfortable presenting a frank analysis...
...While Starr discusses the relevant cases under each heading, and does so in a scholarly way no lawyer could fault, he at the same time presents them quite read-ably and understandably for the lay reader...
...As the title suggests, Starr pursues a theme and provides ample evidence to the effect that the post-Warren Court has not retrenched from the Warren Court's perceived role of regularly striking down the actions of the other branches...
...At the end of his analysis of the Supreme Court's primacy, Starr deals at last with one of it's most recent—and controversial—decisions, Bush v. Gore...
...During that time he was the colleague of two future Supreme Court justices, leaving to become Solicitor General—the so-called "tenth justice"—who represents the United States before the Court...
...When Starr is describing the individual justices, he declares that "in an age of celebrity, the only justice who might be recognized in the checkout line of a grocery store is the first woman ever appointed to the High Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor...
...Interestingly, he begins this analysis with the influence of a justice who never was—his and my friend and former col-league, Robert Bork...
...He worked in the Reagan Justice Department on a number of high-profile Supreme Court cases, and indeed, on the vetting of nominees for the Court...
...I can only say that's spoken like a man who never went to the grocery store with Justice Clarence Thomas...
...Drug problem: Cobain's addiction to heroin began early in the band's career...
...and "four-way intersection...
...The closest thing to another error I could find was in the preface...
...LARRY SPEAKES, President Reagan's press secretary, 1981-87 Includes more than 50 color photos—many rarely seen before...
...But this detail in no way affects the substance of Starr's discussion of the case or of his major themes...
...The author's misspellings, misused words, coffee spills, and half-torn lyric sheets all remain perfectly intact...
...In fact, the plan to which the bizarre twelfth district was appended had already included a black-majority district...
...But for all of his musical originality, the story of his decline and fall recycles many cliches of the genre...
...But not even in jest did his dermal secretions fetch any-thing like the reported $4 million Cobain's ~ widow received for publication rights to the late singer's journals...
...Shabby behavior: the band borrowed $600 to make their debut album, never to pay it back...
...Circuit, directly below and obviously in the immediate sphere of influence of the Supreme Court...
...Divided up, the booty comes to about $15,000 per page, which makes you wonder what the publisher's accountant would say about the $30,000 spent on pages 12 and 13...
...All that said, the reader's next question will be, what sort of book has that experience produced...
...Every comma and doodle receives the full poet's treatment, as if photographed from the original Elizabethan folio...
...P.O Box 137, Bennington, VT 05201 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 71...
...He knows them to be professional enough to be unaffected...
...Ronald Reagan and His Ranch is a delightful book that all Reagan admirers will want to read...
...His focus here is the Supreme Court...
...But the very fact that he feels free to do so is a favorable comment upon both him and the the people he describes...
...The twelfth district, drawn under pressure from the Reagan Justice Department, was designed to create a second district likely to produce black representatives...
...But to most readers, I think Starr's intention—of showing the consistency of pattern across the broad range of the law—will laudably emerge...
...I suppose that to be believable, a review must contain something negative...
...With no more provisos than that, I can say that this is not just the best treatment to date of the Court after Warren, it is likely to have that distinction for a long, long time...
...Even after the end of the Warren era, Starr demonstrates, that remains so...
...Ken Starr Writes a Book (no, not about that) First Among Equals The Supreme Court in American Life BY KENNETH W. STARR Warner Books/320 pages/526.95 Reviewed by David B. Sentelle Ken Starr has written a book about a subject on which he is perhaps better qualified to write than anyone else...
...A perfect Christmas gift...
...70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 would have come out in a Court with Bork on it...
...I had a hard time finding anything...
Vol. 35 • November 2002 • No. 6
