See also
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The following is a list of political career biographies . It is meant to complement the list of political memoirs page, with the key difference being that the books in this list are authored by persons other than the book's subject. This list is sorted by country and by the political position and last name of the book's subject:
Richard Casey: Minister for Foreign Affairs 1951-1960
Ben Chifley: Prime Minister 1945-1949
Sir Robert Menzies: Prime Minister 1939-1941; 1949-1966
Graham Richardson: Senator 1983-1994
Gough Whitlam: Prime Minister 1972-1975
Karl Marx: Writer 1818-1883
Albright, Madeleine: Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, 1997-2001
Brown, Ron: Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton, 1993-1996
Byrnes, James F.: Secretary of State under President Harry Truman, 1945-1947
Connally, John: Secretary of the Treasury under President Richard Nixon, 1971-1972
Dulles, John Foster: Secretary of Defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1959
Forrestal, James: Secretary of Defense under President Harry Truman, 1947-1949
Johnson, Louis: Secretary of Defense under President Harry Truman, 1949-1950
Kissinger, Henry: Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, 1973-1977
Marshall, George C.: Secretary of State, 1947-1949, and Secretary of Defense, 1950-1951, under President Harry Truman
McNamara, Robert: Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, 1961-1968
O'Neill, Paul: Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, 2001-2002
Rumsfeld, Donald: Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, 2001–present
Vance, Cyrus: Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter, 1977-1980
Blackmun, Harry: 98th Supreme Court Justice, 1970-1994
Marshall, Thurgood: 96th Supreme Court Justice, 1967-1991
O'Connor, Sandra Day: 102nd Supreme Court Justice, 1981-2006
Scalia, Antonin: 103rd Supreme Court Justice, 1986–present
Souter, David: 105th Supreme Court Justice, 1990–present
Thomas, Clarence: 106th Supreme Court Justice, 1991–present
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Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative.
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American politician and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman's main foreign policy advisor from 1945 to 1947 during early years of the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was in private law practice from July 1947 to December 1948. After 1949 Acheson came under political attack from Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy over Truman's policy toward the People's Republic of China.
Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.
Harry Andrew Blackmun was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by President Richard Nixon, Blackmun ultimately became one of the most liberal justices on the Court. He is best known as the author of the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade.
The demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States encompass the gender, ethnicity, and religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 116 people who have been appointed and confirmed as justices to the Supreme Court. Some of these characteristics have been raised as an issue since the court was established in 1789. For its first 180 years, justices were almost always white male Protestants of Anglo or Northwestern European descent.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the only court specifically established by the Constitution of the United States, implemented in 1789; under the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Court was to be composed of six members—though the number of justices has been nine for most of its history, this number is set by Congress, not the Constitution. The court convened for the first time on February 2, 1790.
The lists of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States cover the law clerks who have assisted the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. The list is divided into separate lists for each position in the Supreme Court.
The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court is a 1979 book by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong. It gives a "behind-the-scenes" account of the United States Supreme Court during Warren Burger's early years as Chief Justice of the United States. The book covers the years from the 1969 term through the 1975 term. Using Woodward's trademark writing technique involving "off-the-record" sources, the book provides an account of the deliberations leading to some of the court's more controversial decisions from the 1970s. The book significantly focused on the Supreme Court's unanimous 1974 decision in United States v. Nixon, which ruled that President Richard Nixon was legally obligated to turn over the Watergate tapes. In 1985, upon the death of Associate Justice Potter Stewart, Woodward disclosed that Stewart had been the primary source for The Brethren.
The Rehnquist Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which William Rehnquist served as Chief Justice. Rehnquist succeeded Warren E. Burger as Chief Justice after the latter's retirement, and Rehnquist held this position until his death in 2005, at which point John Roberts was nominated and confirmed as Rehnquist's replacement. The Rehnquist Court is generally considered to be more conservative than the preceding Burger Court, but not as conservative as the succeeding Roberts Court. According to Jeffrey Rosen, Rehnquist combined an amiable nature with great organizational skill, and he "led a Court that put the brakes on some of the excesses of the Earl Warren era while keeping pace with the sentiments of a majority of the country."
The Lincoln catafalque is a catafalque constructed in 1865 to support the casket of Abraham Lincoln while the president's body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C. The catafalque has since been used for many who have lain in state in the Capitol rotunda.
The Burger Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1969 to 1986, when Warren E. Burger served as Chief Justice of the United States. Burger succeeded Earl Warren as Chief Justice after Warren's retirement, and served as Chief Justice until his retirement, when William Rehnquist was nominated and confirmed as Burger's replacement. The Burger Court is generally considered to be the last liberal court to date. It has been described as a transitional court, due to its transition from having the liberal rulings of the Warren Court to the conservative rulings of the Rehnquist Court.
During President Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, federal judicial appointments played a central role. Johnson appointed Abe Fortas and Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States in just over five years as president.
Speculation abounded over potential nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States by George H. W. Bush even before his presidency officially began, given the advanced ages of several justices.
President Richard Nixon entered office in 1969 with Chief Justice Earl Warren having announced his retirement from the Supreme Court of the United States the previous year. Nixon appointed Warren E. Burger to replace Earl Warren, and during his time in office appointed three other members of the Supreme Court: Associate Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William Rehnquist. Nixon also nominated Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell for the vacancy that was ultimately filled by Blackmun, but the nominations were rejected by the United States Senate. Nixon's failed Supreme Court nominations were the first since Herbert Hoover's nomination of John J. Parker was rejected by the Senate.
During his two terms in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated five members for the Supreme Court of the United States: Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Associate Justices John Marshall Harlan II, William Brennan, Charles Evans Whittaker, and Potter Stewart. All were confirmed by the Senate.
Clarence Thomas is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest member.
Austin v. United States, 509 U.S. 602 (1993), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to civil forfeiture cases.
Lankford v. Idaho, 500 U.S. 110 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the petitioner, Bryan Lankford, had been unconstitutionally sentenced to death in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held 5–4 that Lankford had not received adequate notice that he could be sentenced to death before the trial judge imposed such a sentence on him, and therefore reversed the prior ruling to the contrary by the Idaho Supreme Court.