Today’s Supreme Court justices bristle at the label “politicians in robes,” but for the first century of the nation’s history, the Court was unmistakably a political institution. Justices kept their partisan ties, participated in civic debates and elections, wrote for partisan newspapers, advised political allies, campaigned for colleagues, and even ran for political office while serving on the Court. Rachel Shelden, one of America’s leading voices on the history of the Court, will bring you inside the social and political world of its justices, showing their essential role in the era’s turbulent political climate.

Shelden is an associate professor of history and director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State. She is the author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War and the co-editor with Gary Gallagher of A Political Nation; New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Political History. Her new book, The Political Supreme Court: A Forgotten History, will be out this fall with UNC Press. In addition to writing for news outlets such as The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Shelden is a member of the Brennan Center's Historians Council on the Constitution.