It’s hard to mistake Justice Silvio Santamaria (“Jesuit seminarian, father of 13 children, Knight of Malta, adviser to the Vatican”) for anyone but a sendup of Justice Antonin Scalia.
#SUPREME COURTSHIP BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY SERIES#
Her approval rating plunges, and the narrative nears its manic peak, playing Cartwright’s trials on the court against a presidential race between a reluctant Vanderdamp (his slogan: “More of the same”) and Mitchell, reinvented as a television president in Bixby’s new hit series - all under the cloud of the term-limit amendment.īuckley has fun with the court’s fractious politics and even more fun riffing on the strange creatures and customs of its marble halls. The case in question is a suit brought by a convicted bank robber against the manufacturer of his pistol, which failed to fire during a showdown with the police - a “business transaction” - “causing him not only loss of income but also significant psychic and physical distress.” Caught up in legalisms (well, who wouldn’t be?) and voting against her gut, Cartwright finds for the plaintiff and writes the majority decision. The novel’s main courtroom set piece - Cartwright’s handling of her first oral argument - succeeds not only as comedy but also as an effective parody of a singular and sometimes bizarre ritual. You can almost hear the mute trumpet wah-wah in the background, and part of Buckley’s charm is that he seems to wink every time he sends off a groaner.
And once again he delivers serious insights along with antics.Ĭhristopher Buckley Credit. Once again, Buckley returns to his pet theme: the vanity and perfidy of the capital’s ruling elite. Eventually Mitchell bows to political reality, and Cartwright heads to the court.Īnd this is the moment when “Supreme Courtship” really becomes a Supreme Court comedy, not a surprising feat from the author of improbably entertaining farces about the tobacco lobby ( “Thank You for Smoking”), diplomatic misadventure ( “Florence of Arabia”) and Social Security reform ( “Boomsday”).
“It’s my numbers up against your numbers, senator,” she says. 1 in America, while Congress has an 18 percent approval rating. Going toe to toe with her foil Mitchell, she drops the bomb that really matters: her television show is No. This is Christopher Buckley’s Washington, peopled with imperious appointees and elected egos, as well as fixers like the octogenarian Graydon Clenndennynn, an insider’s insider and former secretary of just about everything, who steers Cartwright through her confirmation hearings. (“Mitchell loved - lived - to talk”) and who is determined to quash Cartwright’s appointment, not least because he lusts after a seat on the court himself. They include Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dexter Mitchell, a shiny, botoxed Amtrak supporter from Connecticut who bears a passing resemblance to Senator Joseph R. “I doubt I’m qualified to be a clerk at the Supreme Court,” she admits in a news conference, though she’s better at the media rodeo than her adversaries on the Hill. She was once a real judge - a good one - on the Los Angeles Superior Court before her husband-cum-producer, Buddy Bixby, plucked her from the bench and turned her into a star.
#SUPREME COURTSHIP BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY TV#
President Vanderdamp has a Supreme Court seat to fill, and in a stroke of genius, he has nominated America’s most popular TV judge: Pepper Cartwright, star of “Courtroom Six.”īeautiful and headstrong, Cartwright spews folksy Texas wisdom when not quoting Shakespeare, packs a LadySmith revolver and delivers judicial decisions from the hip. Vanderdamp, the blandly honest bowling enthusiast occupying the White House in “Supreme Courtship.” Congress, which has tagged him “Don Veto” for rejecting every spending bill that lands on his desk, hates him so much it’s trying to amend the Constitution to limit presidents to one term - beginning with him.
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