2023 journal article

Persuading the Supreme Court: The Significance of Briefs in Judicial Decision Making. By Morgan L. W. Hazelton and Rachael K. Hinkle. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2022. 275p. $32.95 paper.

Perspectives on Politics.

By: E. Lane* 

UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: August 15, 2023

Senator Claire McCaskill on sexual assault to her experiences both in college and in the military. Smith notes that Ernst, though “rated the second most conservative member of the Senate in 2019” (p. 112), proved willing to break with her party on issues of military readiness and well-being, as she did when she came out against the Trump administration’s ban on trans service members. The biographies of these four Congresswomen are eminently readable and informative, as is an additional chapter on the so-called “badasses” of the 116th Congress: three military veterans, Mikie Sherrill, Elaine Luria, and Chrissy Houlahan, and two former CIA agents, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger. Smith evaluates all the women on their own terms—asking how they viewed their service in the military and Congress and how it fit within a larger tradition of “service above self.” The biographies are well-researched and will be of general interest to those interested in veterans, women, or women veterans as candidates and legislators. Smith addresses these women’s childhoods, military service, role models, entrances into politics, and congressional service, including the ways in which their military service impacts their legislative approaches and priorities. McSally’s class action lawsuit against the Pentagon for its policy requiring women serving in Saudi Arabia to wear the abaya is well known. Smith puts this lawsuit into the context of earlier suits filed by military women that expanded women’s career opportunities in the military, and McSally’s own congressional efforts to further gender equality in the U.S. military. Smith’s handling of the Congresswomen, while humanizing, is perhaps too diplomatic at times. Notably, Smith repeatedly highlights Gabbard’s stated commitment to treat all Americans with respect (p. 150), stresses the “internal consistency inGabbard’s ideology and principled approach to foreign policy” (p. 155), and emphasizes her commitment to the principle of “service above self”— Gabbard’s campaign motto (p. 151). Yet the evidence Smith presents, including Gabbard’s reference to fellow Representative Adam Schiff as a “domestic terrorist” and her inconsistent takes on foreign policy—if not Smith’s assessment of it—undermine this claim. Regardless, even when Smith pulls her punches in the analysis, she doesn’t shy away from presenting the candidates’ foibles, from Gabbard’s gaffes to McSally’s reversal on Trump to win her Arizona primary. The thread that binds this book together is the concept of a tradition of women who serve their country through both military or quasi-military service and congressional service. Smith presents the veteran Congresswomen of the post-Gulf War era as a continuation of a trend begun much earlier. U.S. women’s military and quasi-military service goes back to the Revolutionary War, in which Margaret Corbin and Mary Hayes took the places of their fallen husbands while many others served in support roles. Smith traces the roots of the current generation to veterans of the World Wars and subsequent eras, noting that women created the first veterans’ organization for women in 1921—codifying their identity as “servicewomen.” Smith identifies two cohorts of women. Ruth Bryan Owen, Edith Nourse Rogers, and Helen Douglas Mankin served in medical roles in the first World War before playing pivotal roles as Congresswomen in opening official military service to women. Smith’s second cohort consists of Margaret Chase Smith, who, while not serving in any quasi-military capacity, was nevertheless critical in expanding women’s military service while in Congress; and Mary Catherine Small Long, who served in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Service (WAVES) in World War II, but did not join Congress until 1985. Smith’s biographies of these earlier servicewomen in Congress are particularly valuable for the archival research that underpins them. This book is the first to attempt to understand what motivates the veteran women in Congress and how they got there—though it doesn’t address those whose campaigns fell short. Smith’s exploratory analysis builds on work that separately assesses women in Congress and veterans in Congress, notably Jeremy Teigen’s (2018) Why Veterans Run: Military Service in American Presidential Elections, 1789–2016, and Peter Feaver and Richard Kohn’s (2001) edited volume Soldiers and Citizens: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security. Smith is breaking new ground here, and this book has a place on the shelf of anyone studying this new wave of veteran Congresswomen.