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Reviewed by John Murphy

What if a younger, hotter Judge Judy was elected to the Supreme Court? That’s the basic premise of Supreme Courtship, a toothy and timely political satire from the pen of Christopher Buckley, progeny of the late lamented William F.

Donald P. Vanderdamp is a lame-duck president with approval ratings in the twenties. After two of his best Supreme Court appointments are blocked by Dexter Mitchell, a smooth-smooth politician angling for the job, Vanderdamp decides to nominate Pepper Cartwright, the popular host of Courtroom Six, a hit reality TV show. For Vanderdamp, it’s a brilliant coup: the Senate wouldn’t dare reject an appointee so beloved of the nation’s voters.

It’s called ‘high-concept’ in Hollywood (indeed, Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking was turned into a successful movie), and this one yields some good yucks. When one of Vanderdamp’s Supreme Court nominees is rejected on the grounds that she found parts of To Kill a Mockingbird “boring” at the age of twelve, a bitter laugh broke from my lips. Too true. Supreme Courtship also features characters who correspond to some headline-ready personalities: when I say that Pepper Cartwright is a good-looking maverick whose earthy wisecracks and American horse sense trump her verbal gaffes and blatant lack of experience….does anyone come to mind? Or that Dexter Mitchell is a tall, presidential-looking senator with handsome features and a tendency to prattle on and on….? I hope the “lame-duck president with approval ratings in the twenties” will at least seem familiar.

Buckley keeps things moving at a good clip, and is never less than amusing. He gets a lot of mileage out of “oyez, oyez” and a bit about Pepper debating legalities of suicide complicity while the Chief Justice is readying to hang himself is bleakly funny. The man has reason to be miserable: he had only just legalized gay marriage when he found out his wife had left him for another woman. Timely gags like this one may have an expiration date, but for now Buckley’s satire is a welcome machete hacking through the thick ego underbrush of Washington.