Jeffrey Toobin · 384 pages
Rating: (14.2K votes)
“The result always mattered more than the rhetoric.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Toughened or coarsened by their worldly lives, the other dissenters could shrug and move on, but Souter couldn't. His whole life was being a judge.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“He denounced self-pity and pitied himself.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Rehnquist was just reflecting his shifting role, from outsider to the institutional embodiment of the Court.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“There were two kinds of cases before the Supreme Court. There were abortion cases—and there were all the others.
Abortion was (and is) the central legal issue before the Court. It defined the judicial philosophies of the justices. It dominated the nomination and confirmation process. It nearly delineated the difference between the national Democratic and Republican parties.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Purple prose attracts attention more than converts.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“He saw the Constitution as the vehicle to keep ecumenical passions in check.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“The dilemma facing Bush and the Republicans was clear. If Marshall left, they could not leave the Supreme Court an all-white institution; at the same time, they had to choose a nominee who would stay true to the conservative cause. The list of plausible candidates who fit both qualifications pretty much began and ended with Clarence Thomas.
… There was awkwardness about the selection from the start. "The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this," Bush said. "He is the best qualified at this time." The statement was self-evidently preposterous; Thomas had served as a judge for only a year and, before that, displayed few of the customary signs of professional distinction that are the rule for future justices. For example, he had never argued a single case in any federal appeals court, much less in the Supreme Court; he had never written a book, an article, or even a legal brief of any consequence. Worse, Bush's endorsement raised themes that would haunt not only Thomas's confirmation hearings but also his tenure as a justice. Like the contemporary Republican Party as a whole, Bush and Thomas opposed preferential treatment on account of race—and Bush had chosen Thomas in large part because of his race. The contradiction rankled.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from For Whom the Bell Tolls
“It's going to be a grim day when the world is run by a generation that doesn't know anything but what it's seen on TV.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
“Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, quote from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“She did not believe that the world was a vale of tears but rather a joke that God had played and that it was idiotic to take it seriously.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from The House of the Spirits
“What an excellent tool the internet is for freaks.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
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