News & Politics

Book Review: “Out of Order: Stories From the History of the Supreme Court” by Sandra Day O’Connor

In Out of Order: Stories From the History
of the Supreme Court,
Sandra Day O’Connor quotes Joseph Story, who
served on the court from 1812 to 1845 and, in an interview, pegged then
chief justice John Marshall as a bit of a tippler: “We are great ascetics,
and even deny ourselves wine, except in wet weather. What I say about the
wine, sir, gives you our rule: but it does sometimes happen that the Chief
Justice will say to me, when the cloth is removed, ‘Brother Story, step to
the window and see if it does not look like rain.’ And if I tell him in
reply that the sun is shining brightly, Justice Marshall will sometimes
reply, ‘all the better; for our jurisdiction extends over so large a
territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be
raining somewhere.’”

This article appears in the March 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.

Publisher:
Random House

Price:
$26.00

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