When the senior reviewer began his first study of the work of a lower federal court in 1965, there was but a single monograph devoted to an individual federal court (Marvin Schick, Learned Hand's Court), no true biography, and only a single oral history of a lower federal court judge (of Learned Hand and this then graduate student could not gain access to it). In the early stages of her work more than forty years later, the junior reviewer confronts entirely different resources. Now, there are histories (of varying quality, to be sure) of all of the Courts of Appeals, more than a dozen histories and biographies of individual district judges and courts and many shorter studies. The senior reviewer can also testify to the willingness of lower federal court judges to entertain interviews. Guides exist to federal judges' papers and to the great number of oral histories of federal judges. These oral histories differ considerably in length and depth with judges generally considerably more forthcoming about their pre-judicial careers than to their experiences on the bench.

William Domnarski has published a sampler of these oral histories by judges of the Courts of Appeals from the Third, Seventh, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits and their district courts. Excerpts are provided on such subjects as childhood, military service, law school, their judicial appointment, transition to the bench. and how they do their judicial work.

Little in Domnarski's book will come as revelatory, but there is a great deal that is interesting and suggestive, for scholars and for the general reader. We read, for example, of the impoverished childhood of Abner Mikva (D.C. Cir.), Samuel Dillon's (7th Cir.) account of growing up on a farm. Judges also speak of their law school experiences: Gerhard Gesell (D.C. Cir.) writes of Thurman Arnold in the classroom, Mikva of Edward Levi, and Leon Higginbotham (3d Cir.) about his experiences as a poor African American attending Yale Law School.

An interesting section is devoted to the practice of law from the 1940s through the 1970s. It is easy to forget the days when the practice of law involved manual typewriters, carbon copies and, eventually, the thermofax. Judges such as Joyce Hens Green and June Green (both D.D.C.) discuss the obstacles women had to overcome to practice, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt (9th Cir.) discusses the anti-Semitism he encountered.

There is considerable meat in the sections on the appointment process. There are narratives in which the president was the major influence in judicial selection and others where the home-state U.S. senator was and of what happens when the two U.S. senators disagree. We see the role of the Carter merit selection commissions for Court of Appeals appointments. It is suggested that the best lawyers get pushed to the front more often in smaller states (114–16).

There is an interesting section on the transition to the job—the heavy learning curve, the problems of getting an office running, and the remarkable variety of cases federal judges confront.

The chapter on the nature of the job holds few surprises. Most judges like the job with its broad range of subjects and conflicts, although there are complaints about the isolation. It is, though, disturbing to see such distinguished judges and ex-judges as Abner Mikva, Robert Bork, and James Buckley agreeing, at least on their notable Court of Appeals (D.C. Cir.), that after the conference on a case, the judge will go back and likely never speak again in person with his colleagues about it. When coupled with the “revelation” in another chapter that the law clerks are chiefly responsible for opinions (183), one cannot help wondering what creative, thoughtful, and analytical work federal judges are actually doing.

A chapter partially named “Getting Along with Others” encompasses Alfred Goodwin's (9th Cir.) discussion of political trials. There is an interesting, though troubling, discussion of past tensions on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and two pages allotted to Andrew Hauk's (C.D. Cal.) oral history demonstrating his “outrageous rudeness.”

Finally, Joyce Hens Green sums up what makes a good judge: “A judge has to have courage and express the way it is in her opinions, whether oral or written, not just to ride with the waves of the time, economically, politically, emotionally” (212).

Both specialists and nonspecialists will learn from Domnarski's book. Nonspecialists will receive a painless introduction to the lives of federal judges and the conditions under which they work. The scholar will pick up a variety of interesting tidbits with a reminder of what a valuable resource for research on the courts oral histories can be.