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{{italic title ''Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court'' is a 1998 book by
Edward Lazarus Edward Lazarus (born September 9, 1959) is a lawyer and writer. He currently serves as General Counsel for Sonos. From 2013 to 2018, Lazarus was general counsel and chief strategy officer for the Tribune Corporation, following its exit from bank ...
, who served as a
law clerk A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person, generally someone who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial clerks often play significant ...
for
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point ...
Justice
Harry Blackmun Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, Blac ...
during the October Term 1988. Lazarus combines his reflections as a clerk with a substantial body of research to describe the collapse in comity between Justices – and particularly clerks – at the Supreme Court. The book is noted both for its extraordinary inside access to internal Supreme Court deliberation and its arguably balanced account of the controversy surrounding many high-profile Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty, civil rights, and abortion.


Summary

The subject matter is familiar, but ''Closed Chambers'' argues that the breakdown had less to do with Warren Court precedents or abortion (the latter being exceptionally divisive, but rarely on the court's docket), but rather a fundamental split over the death penalty. This split was later widened over disagreements concerning civil rights litigation. Lazarus presents the zealotry of the abolitionists at the Legal Defense Fund, compounded by the actions of Justices Marshall and Brennan, as a major and mounting frustration even for the moderate Justices of the court. This frustration eventually led even the center of the court – Justices White and Powell – to align with Chief Justice
William Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from ...
in seeing behind almost every repeat habeas petition the LDF's unwavering desire to abolish the death penalty, a position that even the moderate justices had rejected. If true, this would mean that an organization that set out to abolish the death penalty actually succeeded in making it more capricious, less well-overseen and more commonly used. Lazarus also argues that a tightly-organized network of conservative law clerks exercised substantial power over the Justices during his time as a law clerk.


Criticism

In the January, 1999, edition of the ''
Yale Law Journal The ''Yale Law Journal'' (YLJ), known also as the ''Yale Law Review'', is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students ...
'', Judge
Alex Kozinski Alex Kozinski (; born July 23, 1950) is a Romanian-American jurist and lawyer who was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 to 2017. He was a prominent and influential judge, and many of his law clerks went on to ...
wrote a detailed criticism of the book as rife with factual errors, unreliable research methods, and strong biases in its analysis and tone. ''Closed Chambers'' met with a wave of controversy over Lazarus's voluminous disclosure of the internal deliberations of the Supreme Court, which critics argued was confidential and protected by an oath taken by the law clerks. Similar controversy greeted the publication of
Bob Woodward Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist. He started working for ''The Washington Post'' as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the title of associate editor. While a young reporter for ''The Washingto ...
and Scott Armstrong's ''
The Brethren Brethren, also called "brothers", are male siblings. (The) Brethren may refer to: Groups and organizations *Brethren (religious group), any of a number of religious groups *Brethren (Australian group), an Australian hip hop group *Brethren, an ea ...
'', which relied on interviews with former clerks and Justices, two decades prior. Lazarus's book was the first to reveal many formerly unknown facts about Supreme Court's decision-making, such as the fact that Justice
Anthony Kennedy Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by Preside ...
changed his vote during consideration of the 1992 abortion case ''
Planned Parenthood v. Casey ''Planned Parenthood v. Casey'', 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established by the "essential holding" of ''Roe v. Wade'' (1973) and is ...
''.


Popular culture

In the ''
Curb Your Enthusiasm ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' is an American television sitcom produced and broadcast by HBO since October 15, 2000, and created by Larry David, who stars as a semi-fictionalized version of himself. It follows David's life as a semi-retired televis ...
'' episodes "The Car Salesman" and "Thor"
Larry David Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the television sitcom ''Seinfeld'', on which David was head writer and executive producer for the first sev ...
is seen reading ''Closed Chambers''.


External links


''Booknotes'' interview with Lazarus on ''Closed Chambers'', June 14, 1998.Presentation by Lazarus on ''Closed Chambers'', July 24, 2005
C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United Stat ...
Supreme Court of the United States Law books 1998 non-fiction books History of the Supreme Court of the United States Books about United States legal history