The Brethren by Bob Woodward, Scott Armstrong

short introduction and five numbered paragraphs directing the Fifth Circuit.
    Black had won every major point. "All deliberate speed" was declared over, "no longer Constitutionally permissible." No delay would be permitted. In effect, the Court ruling said that the deadline had passed fifteen years ago. The final opinion stated, "The obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools." The Fifth Circuit was directed to issue its order "effective immediately." The H.E.W. plans could be used insofar as they helped achieve immediate and total desegregation.
    Stewart thought the case was a demonstration of the new Chief's inability to lead them through a crisis. The Court's reputation was a result of its bold desegregation decisions, and Burger had done nothing to sustain that reputation. The Chief's job was to harmonize and synthesize. The Court had agreed on a two-page order and had issued it quickly, but the Justices had not agreed on its legal grounds or the reasoning behind it. Burger, Stewart concluded, had failed to bring about a true consensus.
    Stewart felt that Earl Warren would have explained to Black that no one was going to dissent, period, and that they would all work something out. Black would never have pulled such a stunt with Warren.
    Harlan withheld judgment on Burger. Given Black's obstinacy, any Chief Justice would have had difficulty with this situation, Harlan felt. But he did view the resolution as particularly lamentable. Though the Court had acted unanimously, it had handed down a meaningless and unworkable abstraction to the lower courts. What could "immediate" and "at once" and "now" mean to lower-court judges faced with fact-finding and competing interests that had to be weighed?
    Burger was elated that the decision was unanimous.
    The next morning, Wednesday, October 29, six days after oral arguments, the decision was announced. The news stories noted that the decision was a setback for the Nixon administration—the end of dual school systems, and without further delay. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina decried the decision, while praising the President. "The Nixon Administration stood with the South in this case."
    The new Court under Burger, declared former Alabama Governor George Wallace, was "no better than the Warren Court"; the Justices were a bunch of "limousine hypocrites."
    One of Burger's clerks congratulated him on standing up to the administration, saying this case would show the country that the Chief wasn't Nixon's puppet. Burger was flabbergasted. "Do you think people really think I'm a Nixon puppet?"
    At the White House, the President and his strategists were content. Nixon had lined up his administration squarely in favor of reasonable delay. The Supreme Court had said no more delay. Elections could be won or lost on the question. White Southerners would be enraged by the decision, but it was the Court's fault, not his.
    Nixon's Southern strategy suffered another defeat a few weeks later. The President had nominated conservative South Carolinian Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., chief judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, to fill Fortas's seat on the Supreme Court. But the liberals—by then recovered from the shock of the Fortas affair—had counterattacked.
    Labor and civil rights groups opposed the confirmation, shrilly denouncing Haynsworth's opinions as consistently anti-union and against school desegregation. The liberals picked up the support of moderate Republicans when it was discovered that Haynsworth had participated in a case indirectly involving a company in which he held stock. It wasn't a major conflict of interest, according to experts who testified. But, added to the raw political opposition to Haynsworth, it was enough to tilt the votes against him. On November 21, the Senate rejected Haynsworth's nomination 55 to 45-
    Burger had been looking forward to the arrival of a