Thank you University of California Press for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development, by Anthony Michael Kreis.

The premise of the book is the Supreme Court pretty much follows the political views of the people at the time. In that regard, it fails. If the author were to instead say that he was writing a book that argued that the Supreme Court follows the political views of the justices and, especially in the past half-century, the political views of the president who appointed them, then he’d accurately sum up the case.

In order to come up with a grade for this one, I’m going to come up with a different approach. Instead of grading the book based on the premise that the author purported, I graded it based on how I read it. And as I read this book, the author made a very good case for constitutional law reflecting merely the views of the justices sitting at the time. But, since the author attempted, at least as far as I can determine, to write a different book, I can’t reward his efforts with an A and will instead give it a B. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B equates to 3 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews.

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 28, 2024.