“It’s really a book for everyone,” says Roosevelt. “And what I hope people will gain from it is a more realistic understanding of the way the Court works.”
Kermit Roosevelt is the David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Penn Carey Law School.
(Image: Courtesy of Penn Carey Law)
The book unites history and theory to present a comprehensive introduction to the U.S. Supreme Court, exploring how its shifting institutional roles create conditions that often lead to two distinct visions of the Court: one where justices are heroic enforcers of the Constitution, and the other where they are villains imposing personal values on the American people.
As a constitutional law professor, Roosevelt says he had been thinking about the Supreme Court for decades. But as ideas about possible reforms to the Court grew in prevalence, he began taking a more institutional approach in assessing what the Supreme Court is designed to do, what it actually does, and how its role has evolved over history.
“I thought that it would be good to try to put together all of the insights that I developed through those different processes and write something that would explain the Court to demystify it and help citizens think about it in a productive way,” he says. “It’s become this immensely powerful institutional actor in our system of government. That’s one of the things that makes it so essential to understand why it acts the way it does.”
The book weaves historical context and the evolution of the Court’s jurisdiction with theoretical assessments about the conditions that lead to swinging public perceptions of the Court as either “good” or “bad.” From there, Roosevelt concludes with potential reform proposals—centered around the idea of term limits—for the Court to better represent the will of a durable national majority.
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