Judging the Court

First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life, by Kenneth W. Starr (Warner, 320 pp., $26.95)

TO most Americans, Kenneth Starr is known largely as a Javert-type figure who, as independent counsel, hounded Bill Clinton for the multiple indiscretions that eventually led to his impeachment. But that Kenneth Starr does not make so much as a cameo appearance in this new book. Rather, in a self-conscious attempt at political rehabilitation, this Ken Starr goes out of his way to avoid any rancor or recrimination. He heaps praise on Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and often lauds the work of the Warren Court. At other times, he clearly casts his lot with the early-20th-century progressives, who rallied behind Oliver Wendell Holmes’s view that the legislature must have its way on matters of social policy and economic regulation, even when it enacts statutes that the judiciary finds naive, futile, or destructive. Only after such genuflections does Starr offer his own measured defense of the Rehnquist Court, against its ever more vocal liberal critics—who, in the nick of time, have discovered the virtues of judicial restraint.

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.

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First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life, by Kenneth W. Starr (Warner, 320 pp., $26.95)

TO most Americans, Kenneth Starr is known largely as a Javert-type figure who, as independent counsel, hounded Bill Clinton for the multiple indiscretions that eventually led to his impeachment. But that Kenneth Starr does not make so much as a cameo appearance in this new book. Rather, in a self-conscious attempt at political rehabilitation, this Ken Starr goes out of his way to avoid any rancor or recrimination. He heaps praise on Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and often lauds the work of the Warren Court. At other times, he clearly casts his lot with the early-20th-century progressives, who rallied behind Oliver Wendell Holmes’s view that the legislature must have its way on matters of social policy and economic regulation, even when it enacts statutes that the judiciary finds naive, futile, or destructive. Only after such genuflections does Starr offer his own measured defense of the Rehnquist Court, against its ever more vocal liberal critics—who, in the nick of time, have discovered the virtues of judicial restraint.

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.