THE NINE YOUNG MEN

A journalistic, disjointed, telescoped view of the nine Supreme Court appointments of Roosevelt and Truman, and a review of the rejuvenated Court's opinions, written by a layman for the laymen. The Time correspondent alternates chapters on the Justices, their personal and legal biographies, with chapters on the Court's jurisprudence since 1936, its majority opinions, dissents, concurrences and reversals. Judicial history is considered in its major phases- labor legislation, religious liberty, economic royalism, interstate commerce, civil liberties, etc. And each Justice is considered in terms of his position in the Court, his voting record, his famous opinions or dissents, his work in the specialized phase of the law. In addition the author sketches in the influence of Brandeis, Cardoxa, Bughes, Byrnes, Holmes, on the present Justices, the background of the Jackson-Black feud, the brains behind the Court reorganization plan. A problem in condensation and construction, the book is not helped by Mr. McCune's Timestyle and chapter headings such as ""Justice Tempered With Murphy""- but is a fairly sound overall history of the present Court.