Starr lite.

• Author: Mauro, Tony
• Position: Book Review

FIRST AMONG EQUALS: The Supreme Court in American Life by Kenneth W. Starr Warner Books, $26.95

IN THE MIDDLE OF AN APPEARance before the Supreme Court in 1993, then-Solicitor General Kenneth Starr offhandedly told the justices he wanted to "share" with them the background of the case.

"Why not tell us," snapped Chief Justice William Rehnquist, always on the lookout for flabby locutions, "rather than sharing it?"

Reading Starr's book on the Supreme Court can also provoke frustration with the author as he describes, with studied evenhandedness, the Supreme Court's major cases and trends. What does Starr really think about Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that decided the presidential election? And what does he think of the court's pro-state federalism juggernaut? In both instances, knowing Starr's conservative politics, one strongly suspects that he approves. But you wouldn't know it clearly from reading his text.

He calls one of Theodore Olson's pro-Bush arguments in Bush v. Gore "perfect," but he also calls Justice Stephen Breyer's pro-Gore dissent "eloquent." And in a labored conclusion, he leaves the reader guessing where he stands: "One is left with the impression that the Court, by virtue of its independence, remains aloof from the strong sense that it had usurped power and intruded into the province of both the states (or at least Florida) and the Congress in resolving the ultimate political question in American politics: who the president shall be." Exactly. Tell us something we didn't know.

Starr, now in a superstar private practice at Kirkland & Ellis, does occasionally fire off zingers to demonstrate that he, like President Bush, has issues with the wine-swilling Clintonites of Martha's Vineyard. He describes Justice John Paul Stevens as "a dream justice by the standards of the New York Times editorial board and the cultural elite," and calls Ruth Bader Ginsburg "the reliable liberal that President Clinton sought." Sandra Day O'Connor is the...