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With the extraordinary investigative acumen and sensitive narrative skills that informed her best-selling Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last, Barbara Goldsmith now gives us the most sensational case of a contested will in American history—weaving a hypnotic tale of vast wealth and moral corruption. When J. Seward Johnson, the pharmaceutical heir, died in 1983 at the age of eighty-seven, his six children (each of whom was already in possession of an immense fortune) were outraged to learn that he had willed his entire $500-million estate to their stepmother Basia—a woman forty-two years Seward’s junior, a Polish refugee who had once worked as a chambermaid in his household. They came to believe that Basia had used undue influence to “enchant” their father, prying his fortune away from him and turning him against his own children. They wanted “justice.” The legal battle that followed spawned a seventeen-week-long trial, the involvement of 210 lawyers (some of whose behavior was legally and ethically questionable), $24 million in legal fees, and public disclosures of the often scandalous details of the lives of many of the parties involved, including attempted suicide, drug addiction, and accusations of a murder plot. Going beyond the courtroom itself, Goldsmith delves into the family’s past and present, demonstrating that, from the start, the poisonous effects of overwhelming wealth were a tacit but powerfully felt subtext to the proceedings. From her insider’s position, she reveals the true Johnson legacy—one of profound emotional damage. In their own voices Seward’s children, his first wife, relatives, friends, employees, and Basia herself express their thoughts and feelings with a startling degree of frankness, revealing a past of incest, malignant neglect, and betrayal. Through this deepening of the story, Goldsmith has been able to elucidate the profoundly complex reasons why each of the Johnsons believed that what was most emphatically at stake was not financial remuneration but emotional reparation. Throughout the four-month trial, Goldsmith (who researched the case for over a year and examined thousands of pages of documentation) was in constant attendance, and she tells the dramatic story of what occurred in spellbinding detail. We see the contesting parties, their innumerable lawyers, and the trial’s remarkable judge, Marie Lambert (“part Portia, part Tugboat Annie”), playing out their roles in a courtroom packed with press and spectators, and rife with animosity, mistrust, and uncontrolled emotions (which erupted into a near-riot and death threats against the judge). Goldsmith illuminates how and why, as the trial progressed, it was transmuted almost entirely into a battle among lawyers, about lawyers, and for lawyers. She provides a masterful and devastating indictment of American law and lawyers, seen here as an out-of-control juggernaut fueled by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of money. Family drama, courtroom drama, explosive psychological drama, a trenchant and sometimes shocking portrayal of lawyers at work today—Johnson v. Johnson is a brilliant synthesis of the legal, the social, and the human aspects of a society in disarray.
When Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag as part of a political protest, he was convicted for flag desecration under Texas law. But the Supreme Court, by a contentious 5 to margin, overturned that conviction, claiming that Johnson's action constituted symbolic -- and thus protected -- speech. Heated debate continues to swirl around that controversial decision, both hailed as a victory for free speech advocates and reviled as an abomination that erodes the patriotic foundations of American democracy. Such passionate yet contradictory views are at the heart of this landmark case. Book jacket.
In Democracy in America, De Tocqueville observed that there is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one. Two hundred years of American history have certainly borne out the truth of this remark. Whether a controversy is political,economic, or social, whether it focuses on child labor, slavery, prayer in public schools, war powers, busing, abortion, business monopolies, or capital punishment, eventually the battle is taken to court. And the ultimate venue for these vital struggles is the Supreme Court. Indeed, the SupremeCourt is a prism through which the entire life of our nation is magnified and illuminated, and through which we have defined ourselves as a people. Now, in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, readers have a rich source of information about one of the central institutions of American life. Everything one would want to know about the Supreme Court is here, in more than a thousand alphabetically arranged entries.There are biographies of every justice who ever sat on the Supreme Court (with pictures of each) as well as entries on rejected nominees and prominent judges (such as Learned Hand), on presidents who had an important impact on--or conflict with--the Court (including Thomas Jefferson, AbrahamLincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt), and on other influential figures (from Alexander Hamilton to Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Supreme Court Building). More than four hundred entries examine every major case that the court has decided, from Marbury v. Madison (which established the Court'spower to declare federal laws unconstitutional) and Scott v. Sandford (the Dred Scott Case) to Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. In addition, there are extended essays on the major issues that have confronted the Court (from slavery to national security, capital punishment to religion,from affirmative action to the Vietnam War), entries on judicial matters and legal terms (ranging from judicial review and separation of powers to amicus brief and habeas corpus), articles on all Amendments to the Constitution, and an extensive, four-part history of the Court. And as in all OxfordCompanions, the contributors combine scholarship with engaging insight, giving us a sense of the personality and the inner workings of the Court. They examine everything from the wanderings of the Supreme Court (the first session was held on the second floor of the Royal Exchange Building in NewYork City, and the Court at times has met in a Congressional committee room, a tavern, a rented house, and finally, in 1935, its own building), to the Jackson-Black Feud and the clouded resignation of Abe Fortas, to the Supreme Court's press room and the paintings and sculptures adorning the SupremeCourt building. The decisions of the Supreme Court have touched--and will continue to influence--every corner of American society. A comprehensive, authoritative guide to the Supreme Court, this volume is an essential reference source for everyone interested in the workings of this vital institution and inthe multitude of issues it has confronted over the course of its history.