Supremely Partisan

How Raw Politics Tips the Scales in the United States Supreme Cour

On the eve of a presidential election that may determine the makeup of Supreme Court justices for decades to come, prominent attorney James D. Zirin argues that the Court has become increasingly partisan, rapidly making policy choices right and left on bases that have nothing to do with law or the Constitution. Zirin explains how we arrived at the present situation and looks at the current divide through its leading partisans, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor on the left and Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the right. He also examines four of the Court’s most controversial recent decisions – Hobby Lobby, Obamacare, gay marriage, and capital punishment – arguing that these politicized decisions threaten to undermine public confidence in the Supreme Court.

The Mother Court

Tales of Cases that Mattered in America’s Greatest Trial Court

This is the first book to chronicle the history of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the most influential District court in the United States, from the perspective of a practicing attorney who has argued many cases before some of its most esteemed judges.

It gives first-hand insight into the evolution of our justice system—where it has been, where it is now and where it is going. It provides an anatomy of what a trial is all about in an American courtroom, featuring the most famous trials of the period in the greatest court in the nation. It gives the reader a taste of what the storied judges of the period— Weinfeld, Murphy, Mansfield, Tyler, Motley and Palmieri, to name a few—were all about, how they thought, how they judged, and why they were the worthy keepers of our sacred right to justice, as well as the historical traditions of the Court.