Description
Book SynopsisUnited States Supreme Court decisions have interested me since my twenties. My primary interest has been in the cases decided by split votes. If the nine Court justices voted 9 or 8-0 (sometimes a justice’s seat was vacant or a justice did not vote), or even 7 or 8-1, I have generally given such cases little thought, assuming that those decisions were probably reasonable. That assumption was based on the fact that given the different backgrounds, training and philosophies (think Democrats v. Republicans) of the justices, when they all, or almost all, agree on a case, they probably reached a fair decision. Of course, there have been bad unanimous Supreme Court decisions, depending on whom you ask, but they seem to have been few over the years. Conversely, when I see a 5-4 decision, as in the Second Amendment case of District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) (Heller), the subject of this book, I tend to take notice.
The 5-4 (or the occasional 4-3) decisions
