A detailed study of the growing political importance to presidents of selecting suitable nominees to the Supreme Court. Since the controversial confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, the appointment of new Supreme Court justices has risen significantly in the public’s political consciousness. Yalof (Political Science/Univ. of Connecticut) brings some perspective to this process by focusing upon the nomination of potential justices rather than their subsequent confirmation hearings. Robert Bork’s case to the contrary, it is this initial screening process that determines the composition of the court, because the vast majority of nominees are confirmed: 89 percent in this century. Beginning with President Truman, Yalof discusses the selection practices of each subsequent administration. As President Roosevelt’s “court packing” scheme vividly illustrated, the importance of the appointment process has always been recognized. However, in recent years, a potential candidate’s suitability has been increasingly measured by his or her ideological positions as much as other considerations, such as past experience, geography, or, for that matter, proven loyalty to the president. For instance, Yalof traces the important role played by officials in the Justice Department in screening potential justices for the Reagan administration in a quest to find ideologically like-minded candidates. Of course, these efforts are not always totally successful; Justice Sandra Day O—Connor’s votes in abortion rights cases are often cited to illustrate this proposition. Nonetheless, Yalof does a convincing job of explaining why presidential administrations (as well as special interest groups) have come to view the Supreme Court as a means of solidifying and extending their political agendas. While its rigid structure conveys the impression that this volume represents the second coming of a doctoral dissertation, it provides a thoughtful introduction to the evolving considerations that have shaped the postwar Supreme Court. (6 line drawings)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-226-94545-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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