WARREN BURGER'S MARGINALIA - ON MCCARTHY, COHN AND SHINE [SIC]

Late last month, I bought a handful of books from former Chief Justice Warren Burger's library. They are being sold at the Second Story Books warehouse in Rockville, Maryland. There are still several hundred books with his nameplate in them - everything from Smithsonian coffee table books to gifts from the public (including a Bible inscribed with the words, "Sin will keep you from this book; this book will keep you from sin").

Several of the books I bought have marginalia in what appears to be Burger's handwriting. Here's one example:

The text is H.H. Overstreet, The Mature Mind (1949), and the passage reads "[P]olitics has, by common practice, become a 'game' in which men are expected to behave like grown-up children. In no other major area of life has immaturity enjoyed such good standing." Next to it, presumably as an example of political behavior that he thinks illustrates contemporary habits of immaturity, Burger writes three names: "McCarthy, Cohn and Shine."

The reference is obvious. Burger was probably reading the book in the early 1950s while Senator Joseph McCarthy and his aides Roy Cohn and G. David Schine were in their red-baiting heyday. Burger spells Schine's name incorrectly, but it's not an uncommon mistake.

It seems fairly clear that the margin note reflects contempt for McCarthy. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that Burger's first argument at the Supreme Court, while he was working at the Justice Department, was for the government's side in the case of Dr. John D. Peters, a Yale professor who had been dismissed from his job on suspicions of disloyalty. (See an account of Peters's travails here.) Private thoughts and public role appear to have been in some conflict. It is not at all surprising that this would be so - and not knowing anything about Burger's biography I had no reason to suspect otherwise - but here is some evidence that confirms it.