The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right

Written by Linda Greenhouse and Michael J. Graetz

Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

When Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968 he promised to change the Supreme Court. With four appointments to the court, including Warren E. Burger as the chief justice, he did just that. In 1969, the Burger Court succeeded the famously liberal Warren Court, which had significantly expanded civil liberties and was despised by conservatives across the country.



The Burger Court is often described as a "transitional" court between the Warren Court and the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, a court where little of importance happened. But as this "landmark new book" (The Christian Science Monitor) shows, the Burger Court veered well to the right in such areas as criminal law, race, and corporate power. Authors Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse excavate the roots of the most significant Burger Court decisions and in "elegant, illuminating arguments" (The Washington Post) show how their legacy affects us today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Apr 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781541471078

Linda Greenhouse

Linda Greenhouse is a senior research scholar at Yale Law School where, following a long career at the New York Times, she has taught since 2009. She was the newspaper’s Supreme Court correspondent for nearly 30 years, winning a Pulitzer Prize and other major journalism awards for her coverage of the Court. In her extracurricular life, she has served since 2017 as president of the American Philosophical Society, the country’s oldest learned society, and she currently serves on the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her publications are Becoming Justice Blackmun, a biography of the Justice; Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (with Reva B. Siegel); The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction; The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right (with Michael Graetz), Just a Journalist, a memoir; and most recently, Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College (Harvard) and earned a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, which in 2007 awarded her the Yale Law School Alumni Association Award of Merit. She currently resides with her husband in Connecticut.

Reviews for The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right

[schmerguls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

5427. The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right, by Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse (read 29 Nov 2016) This is an excellent book, right up to the present. It discusses the Supreme Court during the years from 1969 to 1987--the years when Warren Burger was Chief Justice. But in order to give context the book discusses events before and after those years as well. Its principal divisions are captioned Crime, Race, Social Transformation, Business, and The Presidency. Each topic is covered as thoroughly as even a lawyer would want, with full footnotes and legal citations. The authors show the ways that the Burger Court cut down on the accomplishments of the Warren Court, even though they did not reverse them--leaving such for the Rehnquist and Roberts Court to do. I found all the discussion of exceptional interest, although I will admit the section under Business dealing with workplace inequality is pretty technical and without close study is hard to absorb. But all the other parts of the book are of huge interest and most enlightening.