Bonus 3: My 2022 Holiday SCOTUS Book List

My deeply subjective (and surely incomplete) list of 10 books for those who want to learn more about the Court, its history, and/or the Justices who shaped it

For this week’s bonus content, I thought I’d take a shot at a holiday SCOTUS book list, albeit one with a couple of large caveats.

Caveat #1: I’m focusing on books about the Court as an institution and/or the Justices (reflecting my own bias toward good judicial biographies). As you’ll see, the list is very light on books about substantive legal topics/specific cases — not because they’re less important, but because I had to have some kind of arbitrary limit on the pool. That means that my very favorite law-related book of the year, Dahlia Lithwick’s “Lady Justice,” isn’t on the list.

Caveat #2: There’s a major recency bias; three of the books were published this year; five were published in the last three years; all but one were published in this century. That’s not because these books are necessarily better than their predecessors; it’s just because they’re top of mind.

Caveat #3: I have no doubt that, in addition to my substantive preferences, my own ideological preferences are also doing quite a bit of work in shaping this list.

Caveat #4: Even then, there are too many good books about the Supreme Court and not enough space to say nice things about all of them. But if you have suggestions for obvious omissions / books you would have included in lieu of one of the following, I’m all ears.

Okay, so with the throat cleared, here we go: My 2022 Holiday SCOTUS Book List (and a gratuitous holiday picture of our girls from a few years ago with our neighbors’ ENORMOUS Hanukkah bear to get you into the spirit):