I received a copy of Five Chiefs thanks to goodreads' first reads. In the book, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recounts his time on the Court by reviewing the Chief Justices with whom he served. Before getting to this, he gives a brief run down of the Chief Justices that came before his tenure on the Court, highlighting their major contribution, both positive and negative, to the jurisprudence of this country.

I think Justice Stevens tried to write a book that would appeal to a mass audience, no legal education required. However, the end result is still a bit too legal to probably keep your average Joe entertained. Try as he might to avoid it, Justice Stevens still used an awful lot of legal jargon and off-handedly referred to legal procedures that most people aren't going to be familiar with-and did so without explaining what the terms meant, or how the jurisdiction worked. At the same time, he was brief and cursory enough with his legal analysis of decisions that the book won't do much for lawyers or legal scholars either.

Seeing how I have a better chance of winning the lottery than becoming a Supreme Court justice, I was hoping reading this book would give me an inside look at what it would be like to be "one of the Supremes." It really didn't. I still have little concept of how the court operates on a day-to-day basis, or how heated, or long deliberations between the Justices get. These men and women make some of the most important decisions going, yet you get no hint of stress, or even acknowledgment of the weight resting on their shoulders from this book. I was hoping to get an inside glimpse into the most powerful Court of the land, but Five Chiefs just doesn't quite get you there.