The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics

Audience. I finished reading Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s book titled, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics, thinking about his intended audience. If his audience is the informed American citizen, his claims of the court not being political come across as naïve. If his audience is his fellow justices and his message is for them not to overreach because they may find the authority of the court diminished, that made a bit more sense to me. I thought of Alan Greenspan’s confession about his foundational error in the runup to the financial crisis. He assumed that banks would act prudently as a form of self-preservation. As we know, they didn’t. Why Breyer might expect fellow justices to preserve the authority of the Supreme Court by not overreaching in their decisions, I can’t imagine. We will all watch the exercise of power and learn how much peril can be absorbed by our democratic republic. Rating: Three-star (It’s ok) Click here to purchase The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics from amazon.com.