@article{470998,
      recid = {470998},
      author = {McMahon, Kevin J.},
      title = {Nixon's Court : his challenge to judicial liberalism and  its political consequences /},
      publisher = {The University of Chicago Press,},
      address = {Chicago :},
      pages = {xiii, 343 p. :},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {In seeking to appeal to voters he would later call the  "great silent majority," presidential candidate Richard  Nixon laid down a challenge to the Warren Supreme Court in  1968, blaming it for the nation's recent crime wave and the  unrest plaguing America's urban core. Inspired by his  success in the election, Nixon maneuvered during the course  of his presidency to alter the Court in hopes of making it  work for him. Most analysts, however, have deemed Nixon's  challenge to the judicial liberalism of the Warren Supreme  Court a failure--"a counterrevolution that wasn't." Nixon's  Court offers an alternative assessment. Kevin J. McMahon  reveals a Nixon whose public rhetoric was more conservative  than his administration's actions and whose policy toward  the Court was more subtle than previously recognized.  Viewing Nixon's judicial strategy as part political and  part legal, McMahon argues that Nixon succeeded  substantially on both counts. Many of the issues dear to  social conservatives, such as abortion and school prayer,  were not nearly as important to Nixon. Consequently, his  nominations for the Supreme Court were chosen primarily to  advance his "law and order: and school desegregation  agendas--agendas the Court eventually endorse. But there  were also political motivations to Nixon's approach: he  wanted his judicial policy to be conservative enough to  attract white southerners and northern white ethnics  disgruntled with the Democratic Party but not so  conservative as to drive away independents and moderates in  his own party. In essence, then, he used his criticisms of  the Court to speak to members of his "silent majority" in  hopes of disrupting the long-dominant New Deal Democratic  coalition. For McMahon, Nixon's judicial strategy succeeded  not only in shaping the course of constitutional law in the  areas he most desired but also in laying the foundation of  an electoral alliance that would dominate presidential  politics for a generation.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/470998},
}