Joan Biskupic – författare

“Sandra Day O’Connor takes you behind the closed doors of the Supreme Court to reveal how Justice O’Connor helped craft landmark decisions on abortion, affirmative action, and a host of other critical issues. Joan Biskupic has broken new ground in reporting on O’Connor’s life and historic role on the high court. This lively, fast-paced account will make people rethink how they view this extraordinary woman and her fellow justices. An indispensable read for anyone interested in politics, the law, and power as exercised by one of the most fascinating women of our time.” -Andrea Mitchell

Sandra Day O''Connor, America''s first woman justice, became the axis on which the Supreme Court turned. She was called the most powerful woman in America, and it was often said that to gauge the direction of American law, one need look only to O''Connor''s vote. Then, just one year short of a quarter century on the bench, she surprised her colleagues and the nation by announcing her retirement.

Drawing on information from once-private papers of the justices, hundreds of interviews with legal and political insiders, and the insight gained from nearly two decades of covering the Supreme Court, Joan Biskupic examines O''Connor''s remarkable career, providing an in-depth account of her transformation from tentative jurist to confident architect of American law. The portrait that emerges is of a complex and multifaceted woman: lawyer, politician, legislator, and justice, as well as wife, mother, A-list society hostess, and competitive athlete. To all appearances, she was the polite lady in pearls, handbag on her arm. But in the back rooms of politics and the law, she was a determined, focused strategist. O''Connor was the feminist who, rather than rebel against the male-dominated system, worked from within -- and succeeded.

As Biskupic demonstrates, Justice O''Connor became much more than a "first." During her twenty-four-year tenure, she wrote the decisions on some of the most controversial social battles of our time. O''Connor''s tie-breaking opinions on issues such as abortion rights, affirmative action, the death penalty, and religious freedom will have a lasting effect far into the future. O''Connor also cast one of the five votes that cut off the Florida recounts and allowed George W. Bush to take the White House in the 2000 contested presidential election. With an eye to the American people and a keen sense of public attitudes, she worked behind the scenes to shape the law and transform the legal standards by which future cases will be decided.

From O''Connor''s isolated upbringing on the Lazy B ranch in Arizona through her time as a state legislator to her rise as a justice -- along the way confronting her own personal challenges and crises, including breast cancer -- Biskupic presents a vivid, astute depiction of the justice -- and of the woman beneath the black robe. In so doing, Sandra Day O''Connor also provides an unprecedented look inside the exclusive, famously secretive High Court.

New York Times Editor''s Choice

""Biskupic, an accomplished and well-sourced journalist, knows the court as well as anyone now covering it... In her new book Biskupic has done something different and a good deal harder. She has written a group narrative that combines close accounts of the court''s public business in the Trump years with a history of its private dramas and conflicts... The deeper message of ''Nine Black Robes'' is that even with a new president in office we remain captive to the Age of Trump... A quiet urgency ripples through this informative, briskly paced and gracefully written book."" —New York Times Book Review

""Biskupic opens a window onto the opaque, insular world of the justices to show an institution sinking gradually into crisis . . . Biskupic is a longtime chronicler of the court, and ""Nine Black Robes"" puts on display her connections within its chambers."" —Washington Post

""[Biskupic] knows how to make news and illuminate the personalities atop the judicial org chart . . . The book reveals unseen sausage-making . . ."" —Wall Street Journal

""Fascinating and informative . . . [Biskupic''s] long experience covering the court . . . has put her in an incomparable position to comment on its make-up, historical positions and direction. It has also made her privy to many significant, little-known secrets about Supreme Court personalities and their historical behaviors."" —The National Book Review

CNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic provides an urgent and inside look at the history-making era in the Supreme Court during the Trump and post-Trump years, from its seismic shift to the Right to its controversial decisions, including its reversal of Roe v. Wade, based on access to all the key players.

Nine Black Robes displays the inner maneuverings among the Supreme Court justices that led to the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade and a half century of women’s abortion rights. Biskupic details how rights are stripped away or, alternatively as in the case of gun owners, how rights are expanded. Today’s bench—with its conservative majority—is desperately ideological. The Court has been headed rightward and ensnared by its own intrigues for years, but the Trump appointments hastened the modern transformation. With unparalleled access to key players, Biskupic shows the tactics of each justice and reveals switched votes and internal pacts that typically never make the light of day, yet will have repercussions for generations to come.

Nine Black Robes is the definitive narrative of the country’s highest court and its profound impact on all Americans.