Stench The making of the Thomas Court and the unmaking of America

Democratic political consultant Brock (Killing the Messenger) delivers a full-throated indictment of the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court, taking aim at politicians who enabled it, the Federalist Society that helped birth it, and the justices themselves. He offers trenchant criticism of each of the justices and--in the case of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas--criticism that extends beyond their jurisprudence to their character and ethics. Brock begins with an infamous memo written in 1971 at the behest of President Richard Nixon by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell that outlined a plan to bolster American business and the political right, in part by reshaping the country's courts. In Brock's telling, Federalist Party leader Leonard Leo succeeded in implementing Powell's plan, transforming the American judiciary and the Supreme Court into tools of the extremist right; Powell's triumph culminated with the presidency of Donald Trump, who appointed three Federalist Society--supported jurists to the Court. Brock provocatively argues the current Court is illegitimate because it was enabled by perjury committed by conservative justices in their confirmation hearings, an election stolen by the Supreme Court with its 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, and Sen. Mitch McConnell's refusal to hold hearings on the nomination of President Barack Obama's Supreme Court candidate Merrick Garland. While stridently partisan, Brock's argument is coherent and well evidenced. It's a thorough skewering. (Sept.)

A full-throated denunciation of a corrupt, thoroughly politicized Supreme Court in which the true chief justice is Clarence Thomas. It was Brock, then a writer for right-wing publications, who coined the infamous slur on Clarence Thomas accuser Anita Hill, "a bit nutty and a bit slutty." He's been atoning ever since. Thomas, as recent news accounts have made clear, has no qualms about accepting gifts from wealthy supporters of extreme right-wing causes; nor will he recuse himself from cases that by all ethical standards he should not hear, including recent rulings on executive power and on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The Court, writes Brock, became Thomas's the minute Amy Coney Barrett took Ruth Bader Ginsberg's seat on the bench in 2020: "[John] Roberts could no longer preside over a conservative court that respected precedent. This was no longer the Roberts Court." The Court was really owned, Brock holds, by right-wing fixer and ultra-Catholic Leonard Leo, the source of so many of those gifts to Thomas: it was Leo, Brock chronicles, who essentially brokered the morally compromised Donald Trump's acceptance by the Christian right with the understanding that Trump would appoint an Opus Dei--leaning, hard-Catholic justice, and so he did.Citizens United was an early test case, and with its victory, which allows Leo to make his contributions in secret, "the power of Thomas and Leo was only just ramping up---and it would take years for anyone to survey the extent of the damage to the viability of the U.S. experiment in democracy," Brock writes. The other conservative justices, notably Brett Kavanaugh--whom Brock accuses of multiple counts of perjury--are nearly as bad, but Brock is clearly focused on Thomas; he closes by laying out a convincing case for impeachment. Critics of the current Supreme Court will find plenty of support in Brock's aggrieved, well-documented exposé. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.