Booknotes: The Political Supreme Court

New Arrival:

• The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History by Rachel A. Shelden (UNC Press, 2026).

In her new book The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History, historian Rachel Shelden argues that the U.S. Supreme Court "was unmistakably a political institution, both by design and in practice." At no time was this more clear than in the nineteenth century. Indeed, "(t)hrough these political interactions, members of the Court helped shape debates about the Constitution’s meaning at a time when most Americans did not believe in judicial supremacy."

From the description: "Justices were fully expected to engage in partisan politics—there was no concern that such engagement would lead to corruption or undue bias—and they remained deeply involved in civic debate and the electoral process while on the bench. In addition to hearing cases in the capital, each justice spent much of his time “riding circuit” and presiding over federal trial courts. On circuit and in Washington, nineteenth-century justices wrote for partisan newspapers, drafted legislation, advised partisan allies, campaigned for colleagues, and even ran for political offices from the bench."

Yes, this is not a Civil War book per se, but there is quite a bit of content from the Civil War-era. Chapters are thematic and largely shaped around one or more of the justices involved. Chapter 5's examination of presidential politics and slavery explores the career of Justice John McLean of Ohio and his loss to John C. Fremont as the Republican Party's nominee for the presidential election of 1856. Chapter 6 looks at Tennessean John Catron's reputation as one of the court's shrewdest political operators, most specifically his concurring opinion in the Dred Scott decision (although he disagreed with Chief Justice Taney on several counts). Catron maintained his Jacksonian-style unconditional Unionist stance during the Civil War and remained on the court. Secession politics and the court, as viewed through Alabamian John Campbell, is discussed in Chapter 7. In the end, Campbell was the only justice who hailed from a seceded state that resigned from the court. The next chapter reviews President Lincoln's successful Supreme Court nominations, the focus being on Jeremiah Black and Stephen Field. The Supreme Court and the politics of the Reconstruction period is a topic covered in two chapters.

In addition to, as outlined above, "recovering (the court's) essential role in the era’s turbulent politics," Shelden's study "also charts shifts at the turn of the twentieth century, when members of the Court and the legal community refashioned the judiciary as an apolitical institution, setting the stage for an increasingly more powerful—and more isolated—modern Court."