A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other

Kevin J. McMahon is the John R. Reitemeyer Professor of Political Science at Trinity College. He is also the author of Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race, and, most recently, Nixon's Court.

List of Figures and Tables
Preface: Democracy in Court? Presidents and Justices

Chapter 1: The Supreme Court’s Democracy Gap and the Erosion of Legitimacy

Part I: Constructing a Historically Distinct Court: How the Conservative Quest for Judicial Success Isolated the Justices from Majoritarian Democracy
Chapter 2: Numerical Minority Justices as a Conservative Majority
Chapter 3: An Electoral-Confirmation Connection and the Historical Rarity of a Contested Justice
Chapter 4: How a Resurgent Senate Tamed the Judicial Desires of Electorally Dominant Presidents
Chapter 5: Polarized Politics and the Court’s Legitimacy Paradox

Part II: Searching for Wizards of the Law: How the Rise of the Supreme Elite Further Distanced the Court from the American People
Chapter 6: How the Redefinition of Quality Created a Cookie-Cutter Court
Chapter 7: Choosing Right: How Conservative Efforts to Eliminate Ideological Drift Stifled Republican Presidential Choice
Chapter 8: Democratic Presidents and the Avoidance of Confirmation Conflict
Chapter 9: How the Selection of Unknown Voices with Different Audiences Transformed the Court into a Judicial Aristocracy

Part III: Legitimacy on the Campaign Trail: Can Electoral Success by Judicially Focused Candidates Reduce the Court’s Democracy Gap?
Chapter 10: The Court Issue and the Presidential Election of 2016
Chapter 11: The “Kavanaugh Effect” and the 2018 Senate Elections
Chapter 12: The Never-Ending Promise of a Conservative Court and the 2020 Presidential Election

Concluding Section: Confronting Detours and Dead Ends: Liberal Resistance and Frustration in the Age of Conservative Dominance on the Court
Chapter 13: How a Numerical Minority Rules the Law and Prevents Progressive Political Change
Chapter 14: Reducing the Democracy Gap at the Coalface of Constitutional Politics

Notes
References
Index