Our September 2007 issue of History Now on the Constitution contains essays (and suggested resources) on the document that created the Supreme Court:
http://www.historynow.org/
09_2007/index.html
Luckily, there are good reference tools for studying the Court:
Shultz, David. The Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court. New York: Facts on File, 2005.
A Reference Guide to the United States Supreme Court. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1986.
Here are some general histories of the Court that you may want to consult:
Bickel, Alexander M. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, 2d Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986
Currie, David P. The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years, 1789-1888. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
_____. The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The Second Century, 1888- 1986. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Hoffer, Peter Charles, et al. The Supreme Court: An Essential History. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
Irons, Peter H. A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
McCloskey, Robert G. The American Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Rehnquist, William H. The Supreme Court. New York: Knopf, 2001.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Most Democratic Branch: How The Courts Serve America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America. New York: Times Books, 2007.
Schwartz, Bernard. A History of the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Segal, Jeffrey Allan, et al. The Supreme Court in the American Legal System. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
These are examples of more specialized book length studies:
Hitchcock, James. The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Stephenson, D. Grier. Campaigns and the Court: The US Supreme Court in Presidential Elections. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Hall, Kermit L. and Patrick, John J. The Pursuit of Justice: Supreme Court Decisions That Shaped America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
For specific eras, turn to a series inaugurated by Macmillan & Co. more than thirty-five years ago. The publisher’s renowned “History of the Supreme Court” series hasn’t moved to the mid-twentieth century, but you’ll find the existing eight volumes invaluable. I’ll list them in their order within the series:
Goebel, Julius. Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1971.
Haskins, George Lee, and Herbert A. Johnson. Foundations of Power: John Marshall, 1801-15. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1981.
White, G. Edward. The Marshall Court and Cultural Change: 1815-35. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1988.
Swisher, Carl Brent. The Taney Period, 1836-64. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1974.
Fairman, Charles. Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864-88. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1987.
Fairman, Charles. Five Justices and the Electoral Commission of 1877. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1988.
Fiss, Owen M. Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 1888-1910. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1993.
Bickel, Alexander M., and Schmidt, Benno C. The Judiciary and Responsible Government, 1910-21. New York: Macmillan & Co, 1984.
Essays in this issue of History Now focus on the court’s early years, the new Deal, and its most recent decades. These books fill in other periods in the Court’s twentieth century history:
Horwitz, Morton J. The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
Powe, L. A. Scot. The Warren Court and American Politics. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
Pratt, Walter F. The Supreme Court under Edward Douglass White, 1910-1921. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Urofsky, Melvin I. Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and Vinson, 1941-1953. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
The process of choosing members of the Supreme Court bench has become one of the most pressing issues in American politics. These books trace the history of such appointments:
Abraham, Henry Julian. Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Maltese, John Anthony. The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Tribe, Laurence H. God Save This Honorable Court: How the Choice of Supreme Court Justices Shapes Our History. New York: Random House, 1985.
Vieira, Norman, and Gross, Leonard. Supreme Court Appointments: Judge Bork and the Politicization of Senate Confirmations. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.
If you and your students have a taste for original documents, you can’t beat this wonderful edition of letters, court records, and other sources:
Marcus, Maeva, et al., Eds. The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800. 8 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985-2007.
There was considerable controversy in 1997 when Peter Irons published this:
May It Please the Court: The First Amendment: [Live Recordings and] Transcripts of the Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court in Sixteen Key First Amendment Cases. New York: New Press, 1997.
Today, the Court itself makes available the recordings of its proceedings. I, at least, find these recordings a remarkable testimony to the Justices skill and doggedness in eliciting key information from attorneys arguing before them. I think that you and your students will find it interesting to compare the impact of the spoken words and their transcriptions. It’s a useful lesson in weighing historical evidence.
Online resources:
In addition to our September 2007 issue on the Constitution, take a look at the June 2006 issue’s essay by James Patterson on “The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies.” My suggested sources may be helpful as well for cases like Brown v. Board of Education:
http://www.historynow.org/06_2006/historian5.html
The easiest source for the full texts of the opinions for all of the Supreme Court decisions mentioned this issue (and, indeed for thousands of others) is Northwestern University’s Oyez Website. Go to their search page:
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2006/
Just type in the name of one party to the case (or both if wish), and you’ll get a list of results. The home page for each case gives you a clearly understandable summary of the issues in the cases, the names of the attorneys (if known). Then there are links to the original documents—always the written opinions and, for cases heard in the modern era, links to media files containing recordings of the actual arguments.
You’ll find there are other Websites that give you more limited coverage. Findlaw.com, for instance, has mounted all of the Court opinions since 1893 with a database that allows you to search these texts:
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html
Findlaw does include cases decided before 1893. But they don’t seem to have worked these into their searchable database yet. To find out if a pre-1893 case appears in Findlaw, I discovered that it’s more effective to do a Google search — “Findlaw Marbury” or “Findlaw Gibbons v. Ogden” rather than using the Findlaw search screen.
Be warned that if you use Findlaw for extended work, you may be asked to establish an account. This is free, but you’ll find yourself in a welter of ads and offers.
Don’t ignore the Court’s own Website. Although not designed with the classroom in mind, this stop on the Internet has an amazing amount of material you’ll find useful:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
Here’s my favorite. No bones about it. The site of the Supreme Court Historical Society (which I’ll refer to as the “SCHS” throughout my Resources pages) was founded by Justice Warren Burger. I’ve recommended it before, and I’ll recommend it again and again:
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/
You may find it hard to leave the “Learning Center”:
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/05_learning/05.html
When a case is highlighted in their Landmark Cases section, you won’t have to look elsewhere for opinions, bibliography, cartoons, supplemental essays, lesson plans—anything you or your students would want:
PBS’s excellent 2007 series on the Court is the basis for a website with an exceptionally strong “education” component:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/educators/index.html
Scour every corner of their “resources” section – books, audios, games, special lists for children and young adults:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/resources/index.html
Bookmark their list of links to online sources for further studies – short and to the point:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/educators/resources.html
Games and interactive features that are useful for all levels. Lesson Plans for 9-12:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/educators/adayinthelife.html
Less comprehensive is Court TV segment on Supreme Court. They use materials supplied by Findlaw.com:
http://supreme.courttv.findlaw.com/supreme_court/index.html
