If you’re looking for Christmas gifts, or just something for yourself, I’m pleased to recommend two new books by federal judges, both of whom I know and admire.
St. Thomas More is the patron saint of lawyers. Bishop John Fisher, while much less known, joined More in refusing to accede to King Henry VIII’s demand that each accept Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and the king’s claim to be supreme over the Church in England. In John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads, Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. (of the Western District of North Carolina) reflects in a series of short chapters on the timeless lessons that their lives of witness provide. Conrad’s reflections should be of interest to anyone, but because he draws on his own legal expertise, they will be of special interest to lawyers.
In Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation, Sixth Circuit judge Jeffrey Sutton (who co-edited The Essential Scalia with me) cogently explores the diverse ways that judicial, executive, administrative, and legislative power are structured in the states and compares them with the federal model. The reader will come away with a much richer understanding of both the various state systems and the federal system as well as with a deeper appreciation of our country’s history. The book is a sequel to Sutton’s acclaimed 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. (One very minor pet peeve: Both books, in depicting the states on their covers, botch Maryland, omitting the western part of the state altogether and severing the Eastern shore.)