Legal History Commons^™

Book Review: Much Ado About Nothing: The Brethren: Inside The Supreme Court, Richard L. Aynes

Akron Law Review

With such auspicious beginnings, The Brethren would appear to be a vital and important book which should be included upon the "required" reading list of those who wish to keep abreast of developments involving the Court and the evolution of constitutional law. Unfortunately, for anyone familiar with the decisions of the Court, the high expectations raised by The Brethren will not be met. Even when viewed in the most charitable light, the "insights" into the decision-making process to be gained from The Brethren are slight.2

The Original Meaning Of "God": Using The Language Of The Framing Generation To Create A Coherent Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s attempt to create a standard for evaluating whether the Establishment Clause is violated by religious governmental speech, such as the public display of the Ten Commandments or the Pledge of Allegiance, is a total failure. The Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been termed “convoluted,” “a muddled mess,” and “a polite lie.” Unwilling to either allow all governmental religious speech or ban it entirely, the Court is in need of a coherent standard for distinguishing the permissible from the unconstitutional. Thus far, no Justice has offered such a standard.

A careful reading of the history of the framing …

No College, No Prior Clerkship: How Jim Marsh Became Justice Jackson’S Law Clerk, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his first four years on the Supreme Court, Justice Robert H. Jackson employed, in sequence, three young attorneys as his law clerks. The first, John F. Costelloe, was a Harvard Law School graduate and former Harvard Law Review editor who until summer 1941 was, like then attorney general Jackson, working at the U.S. Department of Justice. Costelloe became Justice Jackson’s first law clerk shortly after his July 1941 appointment to the Court and stayed for a little over two years. Jackson’s next law clerk, Phil C. Neal, came to Jackson in 1943 after graduating from Harvard Law School, …