The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made

The inside story of how one president forever altered the most powerful legal institution in the country—with consequences that endure today

By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices—the most by any president except George Washington—and handpicked the chief justice.

But the wartime Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the cha...