Tag: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

David M. O’Brien in 1986. Claudine O’Brien David M. O’Brien, a scholar and author who dissected the Supreme Court’s internal machinations and ideological dynamics, treating it as a political institution as much as a legal one, died on Dec. 20 at his home in Charlottesville, Va. His daughter Sara O’Brien said the cause was lung cancer. Dr. O’Brien taught politics at the University of Virginia for almost four decades. “David came to realize that behavioral science was a better window into the justices’ thinking than the cases and statutes they would cite in an opinion,” Ronald K. L. Collins, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, said in a telephone interview. “Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics” by David M. O’Brien. He said that he came away from his time at the court “with a sense of how political the institution is in terms of its operation — not in terms of bargaining and logrolling so much, but how political ideas and political ideologies really are very much alive at the court.” “Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics” by David M. O’Brien. Aware that moving too quickly could provoke a violent reaction in the South, they determined that “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional but did not order immediate desegregation. He noted, for example, that Justice Felix Frankfurter knew more about the court than any other member, but “proved a divisive influence because of his personality, because he was so petty, because he was so backbiting, because he was so persistent and insistent on his own views.” While extolling the virtues of being a team player, Dr. O’Brien said, Justice Frankfurter “turned out to be a lonely dissenter.” Dr. O’Brien said that Chief Justice Burger did not like “Storm Center” “because it portrays the justices as individuals with different judicial philosophies that often conflict.” As a result, he said, while many justices leave their papers to the Library of Congress, where researchers have easy access to them, Justice Burger, who died in 1995, left his to William & Mary Law School and imposed a moratorium barring access until 10 years after the last Justice who served with him dies, or 2026, whichever comes later. He met his future wife, Claudine Mendelovitz, there, and they married in 1982.