Available in paperback for the first time since the 1970s, this totally revised and updated classic is the most comprehensive an accessible history of the first 108 members of the US Supreme Court ever written. Henry J. Abraham, one of the nation's preeminent scholars of the judicial branch, addresses the vital questions of why individual justices were nominated to the highest court, how their nominations were received by legislators of the day, whether the appointees ultimately lived up to the expectations of the American public, and the legacy of their jurisprudence on the development of American law and society. Abraham's insights into the history of the Supreme Court are unrivalled by other studies of the subject, and among his numerous observations is that fully one-fifth of its members were viewed as failures by the presidents who appointed them. Enhanced by photographs of every justice from 1789 to 1999, Abraham's eloquent writing and meticulous research guarantee that this book will interest both general readers and scholars.