Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court
Although one of the worst law students ever, I loved law school. Having worked full time since age 16, law school was my high school.
Upon acceptance to law school, I was provided readings that included, The Bramble Bush by Karl Llewellyn, and an array of the works of Roscoe Pound, Justice Benjamin Cardozo, and Judge Learned Hand.
I enjoyed the reading, but concluded that books like, Woe Unto You Lawyers by Fred Rodell and Judge Jerome Frank, Gideon’s Trumpet by Anthony Lewis, The Paper Chase by John Osborne, Jr., and The Defense Never Rests by F. Lee Bailey and Harvey Aronson, were of real value.
If I were entering law school today, however, I would hope that I had first read Sarah Isgur’s Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court.
Although couched as a book defending the Supreme Court, which had an approval rating of 70% in 2020 while falling to the present where more people disapprove of the Court than approve of it, Isgur goes far beyond a mere defense.
Her defense is not one based in vehemence and advocacy. She explains the Court with humor and personalizes the nine justices by describing them in ways that we would describe our friends and coworkers — just people who happened to be very bright and have worked diligently to be justices.
Here, defense is more a showing that the other branches of government as straying from, if not abandoning, their duties and responsibilities, as envisioned by the Constitution’s framers. A Congress that enjoys the political benefits of not exercising its powers and presidents that are not shy about exercising unheard of executive powers has left the Supreme Court as the last branch standing. The Court is left to uphold the views of the framers in each justice’s own way based upon their views of the Court as an institution and not just their ideological leanings.
Isgur is witty and infectively optimistic in her analysis. She describes politics in ironically starkly critical, yet optimistic, ways having the odd effect of potentially renewing your faith in our system of democracy. She even offers an array of well-conceived cures to our nation’s ills that could result in the possible eradication of our political system of political silos and tribalism.
Aside from providing the reader with a broad understanding of many legal doctrines and processes, Isgur provides an Appendix, “‘Don’t Go To Law School’ And Other Advice For Would-Be Lawyers” (written by Isgur, justices, judges, and other qualified sources of guidance), a valuable glossary of legal terms in readable and comprehensible (fun) style, and a series of notes that refer the reader to valuable legal background sources.
Isgur, a conservative activist and political pundit, Federalist Society devotee, SCOTUS blog editor, and co-host of the Dispatch’s Advisory Opinions podcast has presented a valuable writing for a broad audience written in an enjoyable writing style. I just wish I had a copy prior to law school.
