Free The Oath by Jeffrey Toobin

pledge from the ABA that the group would act quickly.)
    As Obama himself now recognized, there was no longer time for abstract discussions—or even intentional evasions—on the subject of the Supreme Court. About a week after the election, while the group was still working in Chicago, Obama summoned Gregory Craig, the future White House counsel, and David Axelrod, his top political aide, to discuss judicial nominations for the first time.
    “It looks like we might have a Supreme Court appointment soon, so we need to be ready,” Obama told them. “I have a list.”

3
THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS
    T he transition at the Supreme Court from William Rehnquist to John Roberts was not as dramatic as the one at the White House from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. In the stillness of the Court’s marble halls, though, any change seemed dramatic. Everyone on the Court was fond of quoting a remark by Byron White, who had served for more than thirty years: “When you change one justice, you change the whole Court.” As of early 2006, after no changes in membership for more than a decade, there were suddenly two new justices, including a new chief, in the space of four months.
    To compound the sense of disorientation for the justices, the Supreme Court building was in the midst of a major renovation project. The building had opened in 1935, and there had never been a full update of its major systems. Rehnquist had begun studies for the project in the late nineties, and then, after September 11, 2001, the plans had to be reconfigured to accommodate the new emphasis on security. Ground was broken in 2003, and by the following year the justices were taking turns being thrown out of their offices, and into temporary quarters, for several months at a time.
    When Roberts and Alito joined the Court, the remaining justices were all middle-aged or older. The youngest was Thomas, at fifty-seven, and Souter was next, at sixty-six. Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer were all in or soon to be in their seventies. Stevens was the oldest, at eighty-five. Like most other people in their cohort, the justices did not take easily to change—in colleagues or in lodgings. Under Rehnquist, they all won some cases and lost some, but they knew where they stood, with the chief and with each other. There are few more isolating jobsthan justice of the Supreme Court. The telephones rarely ring in their chambers. Year after year, the justices have no one to talk to about the most important aspects of their work except one another and their law clerks. The stakes for any change were high.
    Roberts understood this and asserted his authority with some finesse. During his confirmation hearing, Roberts said he hoped the Court could speak more often with a single voice—in unanimous opinions. In his first year, the whole Court pulled together in helping Roberts achieve this goal. During the Rehnquist years, the justices had reached unanimous rulings in about a third of all cases. During Roberts’s first year, that percentage ticked up to about 45 percent.
    Roberts provided a snapshot of his personality early in his first term, on October 31, 2005.
Central Virginia Community College v. Katz
concerned a fairly obscure issue in bankruptcy law. Toward the end of the argument, as Ginsburg was asking a question, what sounded like an explosion went off in the courtroom. The police officers reached for their sidearms.
    “A lightbulb exploded,” O’Connor said. “A lightbulb exploded.”
    As everyone resumed their focus, Roberts quipped, “It’s a trick they play on new chief justices all the time.” No one laughed harder than O’Connor.
    There was really only one important case on the docket during Roberts’s first full year—and the chief could not participate in it. It was the appeal of
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
, the case that helped seal Roberts’s nomination to the Court. (At the very moment that Bush was weighing whom to appoint, Roberts joined the decision in