The Supreme
Court: A Study in Small Group Processes
Peter Irons, Ph.D.
Justice Felix
Frankfurter once likened his Supreme Court colleagues to "nine
scorpions in a bottle." Having to work with others in such a small
group, often for twenty years or more, certainly poses the challenge
of melding distinctive and disparate personalities into a cohesive
body. Since its first session in 1790, just 112 people have served
on the Court, often working together smoothly, but just as often
riven with personal and ideological clashes. Peter Irons, a noted
Supreme Court historian, will discuss the Court from the perspective
of small-group processes.
Irons is the author of numerous
books on the Supreme Court and constitutional litigation, including:
The New Deal Lawyers; Justice at War; The Courage
of Their Convictions; Justice Delayed; May It Please
the Court; Brennan Vs. Rehnquist: The Battle for the
Constitution; and most recently, A People’s History of the
Supreme Court (1999) and Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken
Promise of the Brown Decision (2002). He has also contributed
to numerous law reviews and other journals. He was chosen in 1988 as
the first Raoul Wallenberg Distinguished Visiting Professor of Human
Rights at Rutgers University. He has been invited to lecture on
constitutional law and civil liberties at the law schools of
Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, and more than twenty other
schools. In addition to his academic work, Professor Irons has been
active in public affairs. He is a practicing civil rights and
liberties attorney, and was lead counsel in the 1980s in the
successful effort to reverse the World War II criminal convictions
of Japanese-Americans who challenged the curfew and relocation
orders. He was also elected to two terms on the national board of
the American Civil Liberties Union.
