Newly inaugurated as president, Richard Nixon considered nominating moderate Justice Potter Stewart, but ends up selecting Judge Warren Burger.

Over the course of the book, Woodward and Armstrong portray the nominations of six additional justices, including the Senate's rejection of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell as successors to Abe Fortas.

[2] Woodward and Armstrong also criticize Thurgood Marshall for being intellectually lazy and apathetic, which legal scholar Mark Tushnet has portrayed as racially charged.

Nichol similarly criticized the book for its overly negatively portrayal of Warren Burger as the result of law clerks biased against conservative jurisprudence after recent decades of liberal decisions.

Furthermore, Nichol felt that the book's excessive focus on the personal lives of Supreme Court justices led it to improperly ignore the ethical issues surrounding Warren Burger and William Rehnquist.