The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction [Paperback]

For thirty years, Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofThe U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction, chronicled the activities of the justices as the Supreme Court correspondent for theNew York Times. In this concise volume, she draws on her deep knowledge of the court's history as well as of its written and unwritten rules to show the reader how the Supreme Court really works. The third edition tracks the changes in the Court's makeup over the past decade, including the landmark decisions of the Obama and Trump eras and the emergence of a conservative supermajority.Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, InspiringFor 30 years, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse chronicled the activities of the U.S. Supreme Court and its justices as a correspondent for theNew York Times. In thisVery Short Introduction, she draws on her deep knowledge of the court's history and of its written and unwritten rules to show readers how the Supreme Court really works.Greenhouse offers a fascinating institutional biography of a place and its people--men and women who exercise great power but whose names and faces are unrecognized by many Americans and whose work often appears cloaked in mystery. How do cases get to the Supreme Court? How do the justices go about deciding them? What special role does the chief justice play? What do the law clerks do? How does the court relate to the other branches of government? Greenhouse answers these questions by depicting the justices as they confront deep constitutional issues or wrestle with the meaning of confusing federal statutes. Throughout, the author examines many individual Supreme Court cases to illustrate points under discussion, includingMarbury v. Madison, the seminal case which established judicial review;District of Columbia v. Heller(2008), which struck down the District of Columbia's gun-control statute and which was, surprisl1