Clare
Cushman, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated
Biographies,1789-1995 (2nd ed. Congressional
Quarterly 1995) (1993).
Leon
Friedman and Fred L. Israel, The Justices of
the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives
and Major Opinions (Chelsea House Publishers
1997).
Fenton
S. Martin and Robert U. Goehlert, How to Research
the Supreme Court (Congressional Quarterly 1992).
Fenton
S. Martin and Robert U. Goehlert, The U.S. Supreme
Court: A Bibliography (Congressional Quarterly
1990).
Melvin
I. Urofsky, The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical
Dictionary (Garland Publishing 1994).
The
Cushman, Friedman and Israel, and Urofsky texts
mentioned in the preceding section are primarily
for biographical research on the Justices. However,
these works also contain bibliographies that
the Supreme Court researcher may find useful.
A review of the more comprehensive bibliographical
works of Martin and Goehlert, follows the discussion
of these biographical texts.
Cushman’s
The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,
1789-1995 contains an alphabetically arranged
bibliography at the end of the book. The headings
are: (a) general sources on the Supreme Court
and the Justices, (b) sources on individual
Justices, and (c) books about Supreme Court
Justices for young readers. [4] The bibliography
cites both popular works, such as books and
periodicals, and more difficult-to-locate materials,
such as theses and dissertations. [5]
Friedman
and Israel include short bibliographical sections
after each biographical entry in The Justices
of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives
and Major Opinions. These "selected
bibliography" sections include brief descriptions
of what the reader can hope to find in each
cited source. [6]
Urofsky
takes a similar organizational approach in The
Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary,
and places his bibliographical references at
the conclusion of each biographical entry. [7]
Like Friedman and Israel, Urofsky also makes
notations in the bibliographical sections that
help the researcher to determine what would
be most useful. For instance, in the John Catron
bibliography, Urofsky notes "the scarcity
of, and conflict among, secondary sources about
even elementary facts of Catron’s life."
[8]
Unlike
the previous three resources, which impart information
about the Justices, the Martin and Goehlert
texts are designed to function as guides to
resources on the Justices and the Supreme Court.
How to Research the Supreme Court guides
the researcher through secondary and primary
sources useful in Supreme Court research and
concludes with a selected bibliography on the
Supreme Court and its Justices. [9] The book
is easy to follow and clearly explains the general
purpose of each research tool before listing
the titles to consult. For example, Martin and
Goehlert define the term "database"
before actually citing to Lexis or Westlaw.
[10] How to Research the Supreme Court
places the explanations at the beginning of
each new section and the explanations are short
enough to provide basic information, without
belaboring the point.
Martin
and Goehlert's other text, The U.S. Supreme
Court: A Bibliography, also offers explanatory
notes in its thirty page introduction, but the
text does not have the same step-by-step approach
as How to Research the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography is
much more comprehensive, however, and contains
9,434 citations to works about the Supreme Court
and its Justices. [11] To compile this authoritative
bibliography, Martin and Goehlert consulted
fifty-six indexes, abstracts, and catalogs,
as well as a selection of bibliographies. [12]
The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography
does not focus solely on law sources, instead
it brings together "a variety of fields,
including business, economics, political science,
law, history, public administration, and the
general social sciences and humanities."
[13]
