Like many institutions that draw public interest, the Supreme Court of the United States has frequently been depicted in fiction, often in the form of legal drama.John B. Owens, "Review: The Simple Truth about 9 Scorpions and The Tenth Justice: Supreme Court Law Clerks in Legal Suspense Novels", California Law Review, Vol. 88, No. 1 (January 2000), p. 233-258. While early depictions of the Supreme Court in fiction tended to be reverential, over time depictions became more critical and melodramatic. In some instances, real decisions rendered by real courts are dramatized, as in Gideon's Trumpet and the seminal trial in The People vs. Larry Flynt. Other depictions are purely fictional, but center on realistic issues that come before the court. Despite the comparative dearth of material on the Supreme Court in popular culture as compared to other branches of government, such depictions are "the primary source of the public's knowledge about the legal system as a whole, including the Supreme Court".Adam Burton, "Pay No Attention to the Men behind the Curtain: The Supreme Court, Popular Culture, and the Countermajoritarian Problem", UMKC Law Review, vol. 73, no. 1 (Fall 2004), p. 53-82.
Reactions to different media Court-centered fiction has been distinctively more successful in some media than others. For example, author Anthony Franze explained in an essay in The Strand the allure of writing fictional novels set in the Supreme Court, noting that as a location it has "an air of mystery", as well as interesting characters, a unique language, history, and tradition, and that it provides "a backdrop of unparalleled stakes".
On the other hand, television series centered on dramatizing the happenings of the court have proven to be short-lived, and have tended to receive overall negative critical reaction.TV Reviews: 'First Monday' guilty of mediocrity, 15 January 2002.FIRST MONDAY!! Talk Back!!, 15 January 2002. One reason that has been suggested is that the Supreme Count is a court of appeals, whereas most legal drama portrays trial courts. Appeals may appear "bookish" in contrast to the theatrical storytelling of trials, especially juries. Furthermore, American audiences are not very knowledgeable about or interested in the Supreme Court.
Literature Fictional accounts of the Supreme Court began with literary works. Of these it has been noted by Maxwell Bloomfield that "the earliest glimpses of the Court in American fiction occur as set pieces in satirical travelogues", with characters visiting the United States Capitol (which initially housed the Supreme Court), wherein "the furniture is described in greater detail than the Justices, who are pictured as emblems of republican virtue: aged, wise, and serene beings who are capable of listening to boring arguments for days without murmur".Maxwell Bloomfield, "The Supreme Court in American Popular Culture", in Kermit L. Hall ed., The Supreme Court in and of the Stream of Power (2000), p. 83-95. Bloomfield describes as representative of these works the 1822 George Watterston comic novel The L— Family at Washington; or, A Winter in the Metropolis, which provides descriptions of the courtroom and Justices Marshall and Washington, stating of the court, "its organization is as perfect as it can be, so far as it concerns its independence, the most important and excellent principle in the constitution of all judiciary establishments".George Watterston, The L— Family at Washington; or, A Winter in the Metropolis (1822), p. 113-14. An uncharacteristically negative depiction for its time was presented in the 1836 Nathaniel Beverley Tucker novel, The Partisan Leader, set in 1849 and depicting a corrupt Martin Van Buren using "the servile Judge [Philip] Baker of the Supreme Court" as a tool through which to exercise power.Kermit L. Hall, James W. Ely Jr., and Joel B. Grossman, Eds., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Second Edition (2005), p. 760-64. Early depictions of the court demonstrated a lack of knowledge of its procedures and internal administration.
This was generally the tenor of mentions of the court in literature throughout the 19th century, a notable exception being the 1897 novel Waiting for the Signal by Henry O. Morris, in which the court is criticized as a tool for the wealthy to exercise power. In the novel, "through its subservience to corporate wealth the Court unwittingly starts a revolution" by deeming labor organizations illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act, leading to the writing of a new constitution. In 1901, the court decided the Insular Cases, issuing convoluted and deeply divided opinions with the net effect that the Constitution did not follow the flag. American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne, through his cartoon character, Mr. Dooley, took advantage of the opportunity to puncture the court's ivory-tower reputation, writing "no matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' Supreme Court follows th' iliction returns. The 1907 novel The Radical, by Isaac Kahn Friedman depicted a justice as having been "inexorably conditioned by his socioeconomic background" to find laws prohibiting child labor unconstitutional. The 1910 Robert Herrick novel, A Life for a Life, "portrayed the Justices as ancient logic-machines, programmed to respond only to the legal formulae of a preindustrial age".
A fictionalized version of the Supreme Court features in the 1931 musical, Of Thee I Sing, with a score by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, which was the first American musical with a consistently satirical tone,Kantor, Michael and Maslon, Laurence. Broadway: The American Musical. New York:Bullfinch Press (2004), p. 139-41. Bloom, Ken and Vlastnik, Frank. Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of all Time. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (2004), p. 228-29. Congress, the Court, the Presidency, and the democratic process itself were all targets of this satire, prompting original stars William Gaxton and Victor Moore to wonder if they would face government repercussions for their portrayals of President Wintergreen and Vice President Throttlebottom. In the show, fictional President John Wintergreen wins a landslide election after eschewing a beauty pageant winner to marry a girl named Mary, who bakes delicious corn muffins. The Chief Justice presides over the wedding ceremony, and just after he has pronounced John and Mary man and wife, the pageant winner interrupts the proceedings to insist she is the one he should have married. The Supreme Court rules that Mary's corn muffins are more important than justice in this matter. The court is later shown as having the duty of announcing the sex of the Wintergreen's twin children.
In the 1937 musical, I'd Rather Be Right, with a book by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempts to balance the budget to help Peggy Jones (Joy Hodges) and her boyfriend Phil (Austin Marshall), who needs a raise in order for them to get married. The Supreme Court justices intercede and declare each of Roosevelt's attempted solutions unconstitutional, ultimately declaring even the constitution itself unconstitutional, and deeming the court itself to be the only thing still constitutional.
Several novels and plays produced in the 1960s and 1970s presented character studies of fictional Supreme Court justices, including the 1963 Andrew Tully novel, Supreme Court, the 1966 William Woolfolk novel, Opinion of the Court, the 1972 Jay Broad play, A Conflict of Interest, the 1973 Henry Denker novel, A Place for the Mighty, the 1979 Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee play, First Monday in October, and the 1979 Walter F. Murphy novel, The Vicar of Christ. Maxwell Bloomfield describes the "common format" of these works as follows:
In The Vicar of Christ, the main character, Declan Walsh, follows a particularly improbable course. Beginning as a decorated war hero in the Korean War, he" becomes successively dean of a law school, chief justice of the Supreme Court, a Trappist, monk, and finally pope"."Life Imitates Art", Princeton Alumni Weekly, Volume 80, Page 65, November 19, 1979, Margaret M. Keenan, author. In addition to the legal and operational dimensions, Bloomfield notes that these works tend to introduce some kind of romantic or sexual tension or scandal that humanizes the judges, and that the stories often involve judges at odds coming together to defend the institution of the court from external criticism.
More recent literature involving the Supreme Court has tended to come in the genre of legal thrillers and murder mysteries, such as Murder in the Supreme Court (1982), by Margaret Truman, The Pelican Brief (1992), by John Grisham, and The Tenth Justice (1997), by Brad Meltzer. These works tend to begin with the murder of someone connected to the Court—typically a justice or an important Court employee. As the mystery is unraveled, this turns out to be part of a much larger conspiracy to influence the outcome of a decision with national implications. The Pelican Brief in particular popularized the concept that nefarious forces might plot to remove a justice from the court for the purpose of changing the outcome of a matter before it. Christopher Buckley, in his 2008 novel, Supreme Courtship, presents a less common genre, a romantic comedy in which "his protagonist, the folksy television judge Pepper Cartwright, not only joins the Supreme Court but also marries its unhappy Chief Justice, Declan Hardwether, giving the novel the traditional comedic ending of marriage".
Film Among the earliest films with a focus on a justice of the Supreme Court is the 1942 film, The Talk of the Town, starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman.Laura Krugman Ray, "Inside the Marble Palace: The Domestication of the Supreme Court", 12 Green BAG 2d 321 (2009) (reviewing Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship (2008)). In the film, Colman plays distinguished law professor Michael Lightcap, who has just learned that he is to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Grant plays Leopold Dilg a radical fugitive who takes refuge at the home of Jean Arthur's character, Nora Shelley, which is being rented by Lightcap. The film sets up a comedic love triangle with Dilg and Lightcap competing for Shelley's affection, and culminates with Lightcap being appointed to the court. An examination of the film in the context of reviewing court-related fiction notes that in addition to the romantic contest between the male leads, there is a philosophical one between Lightcap as "a Supreme Court nominee who views the law as a rational construct distinct from what he dismisses as the 'small emotions' of ordinary life, and Leopold Dilg, a vibrant, iconoclastic activist who believes that Lightcap must be 'thawed' before he can be trusted to join the Court". This emotional reform is demonstrated when Shelley visits Lightcap in his chambers and he tells her that his dream of 20 years has been realized, and suggests that Shelley should marry Dilg. Both Dilg and Shelley attend court at the first seating of Lightcap as an associate justice.