As a follow on to Stuart Banner's history of the Supreme Court, this week's Booknotes+ podcast features a 2002 interview with Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor emeritus. The subject matter: the forgotten memoir of John Knox, a law clerk to former justice James McReynolds, a native of Kentucky. Knox's year was the term beginning October 1936. In history, it is very rare that a law clerk at the Supreme Court has published an insider's view of the court or of a justice. Professor Hutchinson gives the background on where he found the memoir, which hadn't been published before. Justice McReynolds, as you will hear, was, according to historians, arguably one of the most disagreeable justices ever to sit on the bench.

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