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William Domnarski
The great justices, 1941-54: Black, Douglas, Frankfurter & Jackson in chambers.

University of Michigan Press, 2006.

KF8744.D66 2006

This book is one of three in this week’s New Books List which have Supreme Court Justices as subjects. The four justices profiled by Domnarski were appointed by Franklin Roosevelt. They served together on the court under three different chief justices from Jackson’s appointment in 1941 until his death in 1954. The author poses a core question in his Preface which he presumes to address in his book: “Why did three of the four justices dramatically change jurisprudential course during their careers, with Frankfurter and Jackson changing early on and Black waiting until the last decade of a thirty-four year career on the Court?” He says that “in trying to fashion an answer we need to acknowledge” that there “needs to be a middle ground between the approaches of judicial biography and constitutional history that have dominated the literature.” He contends that personality “is the active biographical ingredient that justices take to the court.” In his Conclusion, he states: “Personality may not explain all, but it does prompt us to confront the elephant in the room when it comes to the role of the Supreme Court in the American Democracy. .. Acknowledging this influence helps us understand the Court and its role.”

Christopher Slobogin
Minding justice: laws that deprive people with mental disability of life and liberty.
Harvard University Press, 2006.

KF480.S545 2006

“Mental health law is a legal backwater,” according to Slobogin, a professor of law and affiliate professor of psychiatry at the University of Florida. He throws down the gauntlet in the first chapter and in succeeding chapters follows through with examples and argument. There are over one hundred pages of notes at the back of the book, and these are rich with comment as well as citations.

He states the following in his first chapter: “Many, and perhaps most, of the judges, lawyers, and mental health professionals who apply these laws do not fully understand either their letter or their purpose, or consciously abuse them, problems that neither law schools nor bar associations do much to combat. … Although treatment facilities and modalities have improved immensely from fifty years ago, the quality and quantity of mental health treatment programs for people in institutions or otherwise subject to legal constraint are still scandalous in many jurisdictions. … And, with the exception of the insanity defense, this entire area of law is off the typical citizen’s radar screen. … The primary reason for this state of affairs is society’s general disregard for and ignorance about people with mental disability, in particular those who violate norms or are significantly dysfunctional. This book is meant to act as a partial corrective for that willful blindness. It is aimed at getting society and the legal system to mind — care about — justice for people with mental disability, rather than see it as a nuisance that is someone else’s responsibility.”