Controlling the Court
KONVITZ, MILTON
Controlling the Court CONGRESS AND THE COURT By Walter F. Murphy Chicago. 308 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by MILTON R. KONVITZ Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell...
...During that critical year Marshall, in desperation, was willing to consider the possibility of providing for Congressional "reversal of those legal opinions deemed unsound...
...Theoretically, the judicial function is performed in dignified and icy isolation, but the Supreme Court has been the center of conflicts at many stages of American history...
...In the administration of Jefferson serious consideration was given to the proposal requiring an extraordinary majority of the Court for a decision to declare a statute unconstitutional...
...Stringent restrictive and even punitive measures have been directed against the Court and its members...
...John Pickering was impeached and removed in 1804...
...The same year, Samuel Chase was impeached by the House but his position was saved by a close vote in the Senate...
...Writing on the Court has become a major industry, in which are engaged a host of law professors, political scientists, journalists, and the graduate students who grind out dissertations...
...Following the Dred Scott decision, a proposal was made to increase the number of justices...
...Now an additional burden - and sometimes affliction-has fallen to the scholar's lot: to keep up with the books, monographs and articles about the Court itself...
...another proposal was to abolish the Court and then re-establish it...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Court-packing" plan of 1937 was by no means the first, nor will it be the last, as we know from the attacks on the Court following the school desegregation decision (Brown v. Topeka) and more recently the Regents' Prayer decision (Engel v. Vitale...
...But this and other faults are minor, and do not detract from the real value of the work...
...These are only a few instances of a long and complex series of proposals on how to deal with the Court...
...Reviewed by MILTON R. KONVITZ Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University...
...The author is, for example, too harsh in his criticism of the judicial craftsmanship of the Warren Court, especially of Chief Justice Warren and Justice Brennan...
...In a few years, it will be practically impossible for anyone honestly to claim he knows the whole of the literature...
...While about half of the book is devoted to the ways in which Congress reacted to the Supreme Court decision in the Jencks Case (1957)-in which a conviction was reversed because the trial judge had not allowed the defense to inspect relevant reports of FBI witnesses in possession of the Government-it is an indispensable work for all who are interested in Congressional reactions to Court decisions since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall...
...Although every new book aggravates the problem, one would be an ingrate not to feel satisfaction for this book by Walter F. Murphy, associate professor of politics at Princeton University...
...Professor Murphy shows that the Court has always been under Congressional and Presidential scrutiny, attack and defense...
...author, "A Century of Civil Rights" In recent years it has become difficult for specialists to keep up with Supreme Court decisions, their analyses and their consequences...
...Such attacks will continue as long as conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats are able to form coalitions for ends serving the interests of one or the other partner...
...Murphy's book is a substantial contribution to scholarship, though it contains judgments that are, in their nature, subjective, and with which I do not agree...
Vol. 45 • November 1962 • No. 23
