Glass and Gavel: The U.S. Supreme Court and Alcohol (Video)
- [Music]
- Hello, my name is Nancy Maveety. I'm a professor
- of Political Science at Tulane University. I'm also
- the author of this new book. Came out at the beginning of
- 2019. It's entitled, Glass and Gavel: The U.S.
- Supreme Court and Alcohol, and this is the original
- cover art depicting a cartoon commissioned by the press. Original
- cartoon art showing three famous judicial personalities in an imaginary
- encounter imbibing favorite cocktails. That's
- Chief Justice John Marshall, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Chief Justice
- William Howard Taft. They all represent different periods on
- the U.S. Supreme Court and it's a nice way of encapsulating
- what the book is about and the fun I had in writing it.
- If I were to summarize the book in a single sentence, that kind of elevator
- pitch, I would say it's a cocktail by cocktail
- survey of the history of the Supreme Court
- looking at the justice's behavior with respect to drinking, drinking
- in the political culture they were part of at the time,
- and the justice's judicial decision-making behavior
- with respect to cases involving alcohol, alcohol and the Constitution.
- And there are surprisingly a lot of such cases.
- So the reason I wrote the book, the reason I decided to
- do this somewhat unusual kind of fun book was because I've always wanted
- to write a more popularly accessible book about the history of the Supreme
- Court, which is my field. I'm a law and court scholar. American Supreme
- Court and Con Law Studies are the things I teach.
- And I'm also a great cocktail aficionado. And so I wanted to marry these two
- interests and decided that there really was quite
- a lot of overlap, historically and legally, between
- the Constitution and alcohol. And I think we see that
- right now in the public health and public policy responses
- to the covid-19 pandemic. There are a lot of very interesting moments
- involving the regulation of alcohol, the regulation of drinking behaviors,
- and some rights issues that those regulations raise.
- So our current situation in many ways reflects what has been a historical
- pattern that we've seen really since the
- beginning of the American republic. And so what the book does, what Glass and
- Gavel does, is it traces the
- American cultural history with respect to alcohol.
- How alcohol was used in popular culture and in political culture to...
- inspire political behaviors and inspire legal questions
- about how alcohol should be distributed and regulated.
- So probably some of the highlights of the book
- concern the different periods of the Supreme Court
- in which there were a special challenges regarding the Constitution and alcohol.
- One of those periods would of course be the period of
- Prohibition, which spans and includes the tenure of
- one of the chief justices depicted on the book's cover,
- Chief Justice William Howard Taft. So Prohibition was
- a constitutional experiment in nationally regulating,
- or prohibiting, the sale, and distribution, and consumption of
- alcohol.
- It was a failed experiment because Prohibition was of course repealed.
- But I think what we notice when we look at
- these different periods of the court and the periods of the regulation of alcohol,
- is that there's a lot of correspondence between major
- jurisprudential or constitutional interpretation
- challenges of the time. And alcohol's role in helping to shape that
- jurisprudence and precedence about interpretation of
- the Constitution. So the book would be of interest to
- people who are interested in constitutional law
- and the court. The book would also be of interest I think
- to cocktail historians, because what I also do
- in the book is encapsulate for each judicial period. And I use the
- tenures of the chief justices to periodize court history.
- I use those eras to encapsulate what drinking was going on in the United
- States at that time. What kinds of alcohol or liquor were
- popular, what kinds of cocktails were invented,
- and what sort of social behaviors around alcohol
- existed. And I do this up through the present era
- including our current court, the Roberts bench, which coincides with
- what we might notice is a renaissance in the craft cocktail industry.
- A renaissance that of course is on pause at the moment
- during the covid-19 shutdown of many bars
- in many jurisdictions. But I think readers who are interested in popular
- culture and also in the history of cocktails
- will find the book interesting as well. What I do in each chapter
- is designate an iconic cocktail for each judicial period that I attach
- to each chief justice. And sometimes I have good archival
- evidence that the chief justice did in fact enjoy
- that drink. Other times I'm engaging in author's
- license and a legal historian's judgment
- about what would be the appropriate iconic cocktail for the period;
- what was very popular, what was an innovative
- drink of the time, and what swept the nation
- in terms of consumption patterns. I'll conclude by just noticing
- one irony which is that the manuscript was completed and the book
- went into production just before one of the most famous
- incidents of the nexus between a Supreme Court
- Justice and alcohol. And that's of course the now infamous
- moment in the confirmation hearing of,
- now sitting Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in which he announced to the assembled
- Senate and members of the attending public,
- "I like beer."
- Unfortunately, a second edition will have to await my inclusion
- of this moment and its relevance to our understanding of the U.S. Supreme Court and
- alcohol. Thanks for your attention. Here's the
- book again, available widely and I look forward to
- talking to you in some future Q & A about your interests
- that the book might have inspired. Thanks very much.
- [Music]