My ruling on “The Supreme Court”: surprising, smart, sturdy and yet superficial.
You can’t cram more than 200 years of history into four hours without the saga suffering. Even so, cogent commentary drives this four- hour documentary on the nation’s highest court. PBS unfurls the handsome production from 8-10 tonight and Feb. 7.
The fast-moving epic showcases big personalities and cases. In a coup, the program interviews Chief Justice John Roberts, giving him the last word. “I think justices, myself and others, should view ourselves as trustees of an extremely valuable institution,” Roberts says.
It is an institution that has remade itself repeatedly. In the first hour, Roberts emerges as a thoughtful expert of the early court, which started with little prestige. Chief Justice John Marshall basically invented the court by asserting the power of judicial review, the ability to strike down laws.
The first hour describes the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which found that Congress had to enforce slavery, as the court’s worst opinion ever.
“The Supreme Court” stumbles in the second hour by covering too much ground, from the Civil War to the 1930s. To offset that dry patch, the program offers sharp portraits of Justices John Marshall Harlan and
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The third hour traces the court from World War II through Richard Nixon’s election as president in 1968. There’s a thrilling retelling of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education opinion, which called for an end to racial segregation in public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren shrewdly persuaded his colleagues to deliver a unanimous decision.
Yet Hugo Black, not Warren, towers over the third hour. Black, an ex-Klan member, led the Warren Court to an expansive view of individual rights.
The last hour is the most fascinating because it makes a persuasive case for William Rehnquist. He went from being “the Lone Ranger” on many decisions to an efficient chief justice. With a fair and self-deprecating style, Rehnquist was a sharp contrast to his ham-handed predecessor, Warren Burger.
Rehnquist led a revolution in the court’s power rather than a social revolution sought by many conservatives. Walter Dellinger, a law professor at Duke University, describes
Rehnquist as one of the most influential chief justices.
“His was a strong, muscular view of the role of the Supreme Court,” Dellinger says.
Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the court, is another valuable witness. “I didn’t know if I had the experience that would enable me to do a good job on the court,” she says. “It’s wonderful to be the first to be asked to do something, but I didn’t want to be the last.”
The last hour also takes up Roe vs. Wade and describes how Justice Harry Blackmun turned to his wife and grown daughters for advice on the 1973 opinion that legalized abortion.
“The Supreme Court” features many first-rate law professors and experts who are not regular talking heads on television. They speak with vigor, passion, intelligence.
This landmark program takes a clear-eyed look at how the Supreme Court reflects politics, attitudes and the times.
