Behind the judges and their courts

0 Comments | USA TODAY, November, 2005 | by Carol Memmott

The announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the death of Justice William Rehnquist, the naming of John Roberts as new chief justice and the controversy surrounding President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, then Samuel Alito, to replace O'Connor may inspire some readers to delve more deeply into the history of the court.

"The timing is great," Carla Cohen of Politics & Prose, a bookstore in Washington, D.C., says of recent books about justices and the court.

Among them:

*Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal (Oxford University, $23). Two legal scholars explain the role of partisan politics in the judicial nominating process.

*Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing...