Product Description
President of the United States Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees appointed to the Supreme Court. After one nominee is rejected for insufficiently appreciating To Kill A Mockingbird, the president chooses someone so beloved by voters that the Senate won't have the guts to reject her -- Judge Pepper Cartwright, the star of the nation's most popular reality show, Courtroom Six. Will Pepper, a straight-talking Texan, survive a confirmation battle in the Senate? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? And even if she can make it to the Supreme Court, how will she get along with her eight highly skeptical colleagues, including a floundering Chief Justice who, after legalizing gay marriage, learns that his wife has left him for another woman. Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule. (2008)

Amazon.com Review
In bestselling author Christopher Buckley's hilarious novel, the President of the United States, ticked off at the Senate for rejecting his nominees, decides to get even by nominating America's most popular TV judge to the Supreme Court. President Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees onto the Supreme Court. After one nominee is rejected for insufficiently appreciating To Kill a Mockingbird, the president chooses someone so beloved by voters that the Senate won't have the nerve to reject her--Judge Pepper Cartwright, star of the nation's most popular reality show. Will Pepper, a vivacious Texan, survive a Senate confirmation battle? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule. Amazon.com Exclusive An Essay from Christopher Buckley Somewhere in this brilliant, hilarious, impossible-to-put-down--to say nothing of moderately priced--new book of mine, the narrator notes that appointing a Supreme Court justice is pretty much the most consequential thing a president can do, short of declaring nuclear war; more to the point, that this fact is generally pointed out every four years by whoever is running second in the presidential election. The Supreme Court is by any definition the most important branch of government. Who else has the power to say--without fear of being contradicted by someone higher up the food chain--"Congratulations, you just won the presidential election, even though the other guy got more votes!" Or, "We really feel awful about this, but you have to be lethally injected tonight at midnight."? If you're on the Supreme Court, you are the top of the food chain. I've written satires about other Washington institutions. It never occurred to me to try one about the Supreme Court, for the reason that I never found it particularly funny. It was my editor, Jonathan Karp, who suggested it, and if the book turns out to be a stinkeroo and bombs, I am going to petition the Court to have him lethally injected. At some point, while scratching my noggin and trying to come up with some way into a satire about the Marble Palace, I scribbled on a legal pad (how appropriate is that?): Judge Judy on the Court. I called Karp and ran it past him. He laughed, which I always take as a good sign, since he doesn't laugh at 99 out of 100 of my genius ideas. My Judge Judy is a sexy Texan named Pepper Cartwright. She was an actual judge before she became a TV hottie. How, you ask, did she get on the Court in the first place? Well, it all starts on page one where--did I mention how moderately priced the book is? --Christopher Buckley

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 56 reviews)

Average output from Christopher Buckley by cs211 (United States)

3 Stars
October 04, 2009
I still read every new book written by Christopher Buckley, hoping that he will produce a third volume on par with his two all-time best satiric masterpieces, "Thank You for Smoking" and "God is My Broker". Unfortunately, I found "Supreme Courtship" to be just average output for Mr. Buckley, on par with his last book "Boomsday". "Supreme Courtship" targets a number of present-day American ills: the TV-driven, celebrity-driven culture and the blurring of the lines between reality TV, fiction and substantive real life; the American voter, who wants to have his/her cake and not pay for it; the dysfunctional federal government with its power-hungry two-faced politicians and rulers-for-life; and the Supreme Court, which is all too often looked upon to settle important matters, but which in reality can twist any legal argument to achieve whatever means it wishes. While these are all ripe targets, perhaps they are overly ripe. In choosing to lampoon them, Mr. Buckley does not have to work too hard or produce any subtlety in his satire. In trying to deduce what makes my favorite two Buckley books so good, that is what I have decided upon: the satirical target needs to be a worthy one, but not one that is so obvious that many of the jokes seem familiar upon reading them, or cause one to say "yes, of course" or "I could have written that". I remain hopeful that Mr. Buckley will keep at his craft, and will produce another epic American satirical masterpiece worthy of bestowing upon him the honorific title of "a modern day Mark Twain". "Supreme Courtship" isn't it, but hopefully there's more to come.

What a waste by Daiun (United States)

1 Stars
September 25, 2009
A wasted effort. I read the first few chapters, my wife read maybe ten pages. Garbage (see submitted picture).

Wonderful Parody of Convergence of Politics and Entertainment by Joseph DeSantis (Washington, DC)

4 Stars
September 04, 2009
Christopher Buckley's Supreme Courtship is a wonderful parody of the extent to which entertainment and politics have merged. It also pokes excellent fun of the nomination process. In the book, an Eisenhower type President gets frustrated by the Senate Judiciary Committee for rejecting all of his highly qualified justices. One justice is rejected because of a movie review he wrote in the sixth grade in which he said that To Kill a Mockingbird was a "little boring." This causes the head of the Judiciary Committee to declare he could not in good conscious appoint a justice 'who may show up to his first day on the bench dressed not in a justices robe but in a Ku Klux Klan outfit." This turns out to be the last straw for the President, who responds by nominating a TV judge - sort of a younger, hotter Judge Judy. The public loves the idea and no Senator could risk voting against her. Hilarity ensues. A fun read and excellent parody.

Entertaining romp through Washington DC by Alan A. Elsner (Washington DC)

3 Stars
June 22, 2009
What would happen if the President appointed a TV judge like Judge Judy to the Supreme Court? That's the premise of this entertaining inside-Washington romp that dissects the ways of the White House, the Capitol and the nation's highest court. Buckley knows his Washington and provides several hilarious scenes broadly lampooning the political scene. A couple of scenes are priceless. His description of a Supreme Court hearing, with everyone quoting Latin and referencing obscure case law is laugh-out-loud funny. Likewise, the confirmation hearings of the new justice. I place this book in the glorious tradition of Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop" -- but it doesn't quite reach that level. Congress and the Court present rather large targets for ridicule and the best satire has a serious point. Buckley's sole purpose seems to be to entertain. In this, he succeeds.

Hard To Stay Clever by Gerald Swimmer (Rye, New York United States)

3 Stars
June 21, 2009
The first half of this book is wonderful. The satire is biting and the characters are wonderful. I read this as we were awaiting the hearings for a Supreme Court judge so it was timely and made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately the second half of the book was not nearly as good. It seemed to me that Buckley tried to hard for laughs. Satire has to have a touch of realism and that is what is lost in the second half of this book.

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