A Most Disorderly Court and Reubin O'D. Askew - The Golden Age of Florida Politics.

• Author: Groot, Lonnie N.

A Most Disorderly Court and Reubin O'D. Askew--The Golden Age of Florida Politics

By Martin A. Dyckman

Edmund Burke is often misquoted as stating, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." Spanish philosopher George Santayana is credited with saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And, Winston Churchill wrote, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Two books by Martin Dyckman written over a decade ago are immensely valuable to aid those lawyers who treasure the Florida judicial system and Florida government as a whole. Dyckman covered local, state, and national government and politics and wrote editorials during an almost half-century career with the former St. Petersburg Times and for about a decade he was chief of the newspaper's Tallahassee bureau.

A Most Disorderly Court is a brilliantly written story of political scandal and reform. In the 1970s, Florida Supreme Court justices were popularly elected. But a number of scandals threatened to topple the court until public outrage led to profound reforms and fundamental changes in the way supreme justices were seated. The book chronicles Dyckman's investigative journalism during the time which led to the resignations of two Supreme Court justices and to the constitutional amendment providing for merit selection and retention of Florida appellate judges. The work tells the story of a justice abruptly retiring after being filmed on an expensive junket to Las Vegas; of two other justices trying to fix cases in lower courts on behalf of campaign supporters; and about a fourth justice destroying evidence by shredding his copy of a document and flushing it down a toilet in his Supreme Court chambers. In 1984, The Florida Bar Foundation recognized Dyckman's...