The most powerful court in the world : a history of the Supreme Court of the United States / Stuart Banner.

"In the United States, we answer some of our most bitterly contested questions by presenting them to nine elderly lawyers, the justices of the Supreme Court. The Court was the most powerful court in the world when it was established in the late 1700s, and until recently it has had no competitors for the title. This book is about how the Court acquired so much power, how it has retained its power in the face of repeated challenges, and what it has done with its power over the years. The book shows that from the beginning, the Court has always been tasked with deciding high-profile cases involving issues that a great many people cared deeply about, along with a much larger number of obscure cases raising technical questions of little interest to most people. Critics of the Court's best-known decisions have always accused the justices of deciding cases on political rather than legal grounds. In this respect, today's criticism of the Court continues a tradition that has lasted for more than two centuries."