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When Dr. Samuel Johnson observed that a dog's walking on his hinder legs may not be done well but one is surprised that it is done at all,1 he might well have been contemplating the problem of preparing a roundup review of recent books 2 on the Supreme Court. Can it be done well is not the question; but rather, can it be done at all? Indeed, can any valid generalizations be made about so diverse a body of literature?

The editors of the Supreme Court Historical Society's Yearbook have determined that such a review covering the current year's crop of Supreme Court-related titles can be a useful tool, and can serve as a valid springboard for more focused discussion. Thus it will become a regular feature of the annual Yearbook. For this first year, a tripartite approach will be taken. Part One will consist of a statistical breakdown of some of the major, pertinent titles published in the last dozen years.3 Part Two evaluates several of the multivolume sets produced during this period. Part Three concerns the major titles published from 1974 to the present.

PART ONE

Considering the output on a purely statistical level, some 301 titles were published from 1964-1967. For manageability's sake, they were divided into eleven categories. This was not an easy task in itself. Authors of books on the Supreme Court do not always think in categories, thus, the classification was arbitrary at times. To take one example, in Harvie Wilkinson's Serving Justice; a Supreme Court Clerk's View (New York: Knopf, 1974), the author describes the day-to-day workings of the Supreme Court and also Justice Powell's personality and his work before and since joining the Supreme Court. Therefore, it could have found its niche under both the categories, "Mechanics" and "Specific Justices." The latter category was chosen as it seemed more appropriate for the book as a whole.

Some explanation of the categorization process is in order. The reader is referred to the three tables entitled: "Books on the Supreme Court," "Specific Justices," and "Fundamental Rights." In the first table, "Historical" was the label given to titles dealing either with the development of a theme or themes over time (an obvious example: The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1971), or a specific personage and/or period (e.g., Alfred Cope's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court (Lexington, Massachusetts:

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