Includes bibliographical references and index.

Establishing the court -- Itinerant judges on a part-time court -- Federal and state power -- Slaves and Indians --The court and the Civil War -- Life at the court, 1870-1930 -- The Jim Crow court -- The Lochner era -- The birth of the modern court -- Court-packing and constitutional change -- The justices at war -- Desegregation -- The liberal court -- A partial counterrevolution -- New paths to the court -- Back to the right.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.