1. Early on, the film notes that Justice Black was an ambitious lawyer and politician from Alabama. He made one giant leap into the U.S. Senate in 1926, and he was re-elected to the Senate in 1932. He was an ardent New Dealer. Later, the film also notes that Chief Justice Warren was also a politician. He served as the Attorney General of California and then as Governor of that state. Back then, it was fairly common for “men [not women, of course] of affairs” to be appointed to the Court. Over the past two generation, that has changed. Now, Supreme Court justices have careers as lawyers and/or law professors, and always have judicial, not political, experience before coming to the Court. Two questions: What difference do you think it might make to Black and Warren’s respective work on the Court that they had high-level experience in politics and public office? Why do you think the “resume” of the typical Supreme Court justice has changed?
2. Hugo L. Black joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Alabama in the 1920’s, a time of ascendance for the Klan. Given what you learned about Black’s Klan background and the controversy over it in 1937 just after Black was confirmed by the Senate, how do you think his Klan background (and/or the controversy) may have shaped or influenced his subsequent career as a Justice?
3. Several of the scholars interviewed in the film mention Justice Black’s “method of constitutional interpretation,” a view that is perhaps best characterized as a blend of looking for the original intentions of the framers of constitutional language, whether in 1787, or in 1868, and the plain, literal, meaning of the text, or “textualism.” Two scholars note the parallel between how Black thought about constitutional text and meaning and how a fundamentalist might read the Bible. What do you think about this approach to the Constitution? What might be its virtues and defects? What might be good about it, and what might be bad about it?
4. Much of the film addresses matters we will study later in the course, including segregation and the Court’s decision in Brown and its legacies. When discussing Brown, law professor Michael Klarman opines that “the Supreme Court was arguably more democratic than Congress or the Presidency.” What do you think he means by this? Is he right about that? What are the implications for that remark when we are thinking about judicial review in a constitutional democracy?
5. At the end of the film, several commentators state that the Warren Court transformed American society—produced great social change—through its landmark decisions interpreting the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. Do you agree? How could we know what role the Court actually played? What information would we need to make judgments about the impact of Supreme Court decisions?
