Like the question “What, another book on Plato?” here the question is “Another book on Brown v. Board of Education?” We needed more after Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice (1975), but after Michael Klarman’s reinterpretation and the contributions of Mark Tushnet, Dennis Hutchinson, Mary Dudziak, and Kevin McMahon, did more need to be said? However, in A Storm over This Court (taken from Hugo Black’s warning against rash enforcement of desegregation). Jeffrey Hockett does something different by applying leading models of judicial decision making to justices’ votes in Brown, which is thus the lens through which to examine those models, and by critiquing their ability to explain votes in Brown and Supreme Court decision making more generally. Throughout, Hockett draws intensively on briefs, oral arguments, justices’ notes about their deliberations, and other materials reflecting their views.

Chapter 1 is a clear statement of the parties’ arguments, presented in terms of barriers to a decision striking down school desegregation, but it recounts previous knowledge, and the arguments are otherwise available. Then each judicial decision-making model is treated in a chapter serving to explain the votes of several justices, with extended treatments of individual justices appearing within the frame of specific theories. Chapter 2 is devoted to the justices’ attitudes, and strategic considerations and internal constraints are in Chapter 3. Institutional consideration of the justices’ sense of the Court’s mission is in Chapter 4, Cold War international considerations in Chapter 5, and domestic political considerations in Chapter 6. The Conclusion integrates and extends the previous discussion. Not surprisingly, Hockett concludes that “the most convincing account of the Brown decision is one that employs the insights of numerous approaches to Supreme Court decision making” (p. 178), as “multiple models of Supreme Court decision making must be consulted in order fully to explain Brown” (p. 185).

One wishing to learn more about what motivated the justices will find useful material here, more in some chapters than others. One example is an exploration of Earl Warren, including his earlier comments and actions on racial politics, plus why his opinion for the Court avoided the argument that segregation was racist, and his efforts at collegiality, which did not eliminate all disagreement. There is attention to Justices Black and Robert Jackson as to the effect of a sense of the Court’s mission, although Hockett makes more of Black’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan than is warranted as a starting point of his ideology.

Much of this book has the feel of “Some Thoughts about What Others Have Said about Brown.” Each chapter and some subsections begin with a synthesis of existing studies, but it would be better had Hockett immediately moved to substance while weaving in the literature’s contributions. For example, before discussing the justices, the chapter on attitudes starts with Glendon Schubert, moves to David Rohde and Harold Spaeth, to Jeffrey Segal and Spaeth, then to Gerald Rosenberg and Klarman, and to Neil Tate’s attribute models and to ideological drift. And in Chapter 5, after attention to Robert Dahl and Martin Shapiro, one has Kevin McMahon on the attempt by Franklin D. Roosevelt to reshape southern politics and Mark Graber on the use of the Supreme Court to resolve political stalemates. Political scientists already know this historiographical material, which at times gets in the way of the author’s principal concern. The Conclusion, which attends to the relevance of contemporary normative concerns, includes Alexander Bickel, Phillip Kurland, Gary McDowell, and Robert Bork for their criticism of Warren Court activism and Ronald Kahn’s “constitutive interpretation” (quoted at p. 192).

The book begins awkwardly, although once past the Introduction, the author settles down, much as a baseball pitcher survives a shaky first inning to throw a good game. Hockett accepts what he calls “the conventional view that Brown was the product of the justices’ liberal values” (p. 7), a claim lacking support, perhaps from public opinion data. But whose conventional view? Nor was the Brown opinion based “on the empirical proposition that racial segregation in public schools generates a feeling of inferiority” (p. 2), hardly its primary thrust.

Yes, the opinion was roundly criticized, not only by those objecting to its result but also by some supporters of school desegregation who felt it sounded much like a Sunday School sermon and should have contained more legal analysis and attention to the Court’s prior incremental development of desegregation law. That does not, however, mean that the public then saw the ruling as reflecting personal ideological preferences. Judicial behavioralism was sprouting in the 1950s, but people then were not talking in its terms. Hockett thus appears to read later models back into an earlier period in order to set up a straw platform from which to launch his criticism of attitudinalism’s explanatory (in)sufficiency.

Yet if one begins at his starting point, Hockett does make good on his statement that “[t]his book challenges the empirical basis of this normative assessment of the Warren Court’s constitutional jurisdiction by demonstrating the problematic nature of an attitudinal account of the Brown decision” (p. 5). He does show that in addition to justices’ ideologies, Brown was affected by institutional considerations (e.g., a united front), awareness of the Court’s role in Cold War international affairs, and belief that the Court had an important mission to counter racial injustice. While teeing up the attitudinal view for criticism, Hockett does draw effectively on contributions of other approaches to our understanding of the justices’ votes.

Another early and continuing problem stems from the author’s distinction between instrumental and noninstrumental approaches, which at times makes following his argument difficult. “Instrumental decision making” supports personal values and includes the attitudinal and strategic models, with institutions viewed as impediments to the achievement of personal values, while in a noninstrumental approach, institutions provide information about normatively appropriate behavior and take into account institutional concerns, including loyalty to the Court and pressures from, and implications for, both domestic and foreign policy.

Nor is his distinction between types fully clear. For example, how does the Supreme Court’s “reflect[ing] the broader and social and political culture of the time,” citing Klarman, support the attitudinal model, although these factors could offset attitude (see p. 9)? And if strategic departure from a “sincere” vote upholds the attitudinal model, what action by a justice does not? Why is being affected by institutional loyalty not simply a (temporary) departure from personal preferences or itself a “political preference”?

My principal reservation is about something the author could have avoided. For too many, law and court journal articles and books have had to become a test of models, especially the attitudinal one, and Hockett feels compelled to ask “What would the attitudinalists say?” to each alternative explanation. Had he instead utilized his interesting material to explain Brown without his nomenclature and emphasis on models, that approach would have assisted in taking the book beyond its insider worth to law and courts scholars to give much more to those, including the educated lay public, wishing to learn more about Brown itself.

Despite my reservations, Hockett’s effort to explain the Brown justices’ votes in terms of various theories of decision making is a valuable enterprise, and it will be interesting to see if someone else applies his approach to another landmark case, such as Roe v. Wade, once sufficient evidence exists.