The Judicial Bookshelf

Abstract

“The good that Presidents do is often interred with their Administrations. It is their choice of Supreme Court Justices that lives after them.”1 This was the assessment offered by one leading opinion journal more than seven decades ago, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Professor Felix Frankfurter to the Supreme Court to fill the opening occasioned by the death of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. Because vacancies on the Court not only are infrequent but also occur at irregular intervals, the comment illustrates the reality that selection of Justices is among the most important and consequential responsibilities that fall to any chief executive.