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Scalia: A Court of One, the latest biography by Bruce Allen Murphy, Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights, is receiving national media attention for its unflinching and thorough examination of one of the most polarizing and outspoken figures to serve on the nation’s highest court.
Bruce Allen Murphy
Released June 10 to coincide with the conclusion of the Court’s 2013-14 term, Scalia is Murphy’s fourth biography of a Supreme Court justice. In an interview with MSNBC, Murphy explained that he chose Scalia as a biographical subject because he is as interesting and controversial as his last subject, iconic liberal Justice William O. Douglas.
“I wanted to find someone on the modern court who would allow me to complete my journey for the 20th and 21st centuries,” Murphy told MSNBC reporter Krystal Ball in a one-on-one interview.
A brilliant jurist and one of the best at “finding the jugular in an argument,” Scalia fit the bill, said Murphy.
The New York Times called the biography “a sensitive and scholarly reading of Justice Scalia’s intellectual life, based on archival research rather than on extensive interviews;” a book more about the mind than the man.
“This volume, which quotes the justice at length, functions as an M.R.I. scan of one of the most influential conservative thinkers of the 20th century.”
A review in The Atlantic praised Murphy, saying “Scalia has met a timely and unintimidated biographer ready to probe,” and the Boston Globe declared Scalia “thoroughly researched and accessible.”
Reviewing Scalia for The Week, Andrew Cohen wrote, “This is a book very much worth buying and reading… 100 years from now it surely will animate the discussion of Scalia’s place in constitutional history. It will, I think, help our children and our grandchildren understand why no one in our time ever called it the ‘Scalia Court,’ despite the enormous presence of this brilliant man in shaping, for better and for worse, the path of the law we all must walk.”
1 Comment
Professor Murphy: If you have not read Edward Whelan’s review of your Scalia bio in National Review (July 7), you’d better. Otherwise you’ll leave yourself vulnerable to being blind-sided by questions and comments from colleagues and students. The NR Letters page is almost always devoted to reader criticism, followed by the writer’s or editor’s response. NR might give you space to defend your work.
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