Let me give you some back­ground about myself: I’m more attuned to absorb broad knowl­edge than deep under­stand­ing. I can work at truly inci­sive wis­dom about a topic, but my default mode is sound-bites and head­lines. What can I say, at least I rec­og­nize it. For that rea­son, I was aware of some Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions and cases that came and went, but I had no more than a vague aware­ness that they were there.

Jef­frey Toobin’s The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court was a fas­ci­nat­ing read. It gave me his­tor­i­cal and legal back­ground about the major Supreme Court cases of my time. It gave me his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal back­ground about the Supreme Court jus­tices of my time. I found the style engag­ing and inter­est­ing, if a bit long winded. There were entirely too many occa­sions when I said to myself, “haven’t I read this before?” How­ever, Toobin repeated entire pas­sages for rea­sons — obvi­ously he didn’t repeat him­self by mis­take — and it’s a nit-pick when view­ing the entirety of the work.

There are crit­ics of Toobin who claim he is too par­ti­san one way or another; too pro or con one jus­tice or another. I know that the Volokh Con­spir­acy in par­tic­u­lar has issues with his views. They are prob­a­bly right, but I wasn’t expect­ing an eru­dite trea­tise on con­sti­tu­tional law; I was expect­ing a descrip­tion of the Supreme Court, and that’s exactly what I got.