The Judge: 26 Machiavellian Lessons

Law professors Collins and Skover (coauthors of When Money Speaks) take an unusual approach to making their point that serving as a judge in the U.S. is inevitably political: they model their new book on Machiavelli’s The Prince. Unfortunately, the results are ponderous. They state that those “judges are greatest who understand the advantages of replacing the old virtues of judging (rooted in neutrality) with the new virtues of judging (grounded in hypocrisy).” While the authors concede at the end of the work that they have been intentionally provocative, their heavy-handed approach will be of limited appeal, and is decidedly not aimed at lay readers. Noting that historical events—such as President McKinley’s assassination, which allowed Theodore Roosevelt to nominate the influential Oliver Wendell Holmes—play a major role in the Supreme Court’s composition and thus in how it decides cases is less than profound, especially in the wake of the Gorsuch confirmation battle. The key point—that judges often decide cases based on personal factors, rather than objective analysis—has been made before, and more cogently, in books such as Richard Posner’s How Judges Think. [em](Oct.) [/em]