Word: brennans
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...barbed wire and tombstones. Over the years, the catalog grew thicker and slicker. Among the fashion models who graced its pages were Lauren Bacall, Susan Hayward and Suzy Parker. But competition from more specialized retailers gradually eroded the selling power of the book. Last week Montgomery Ward President Bernard Brennan announced that the last catalog will be mailed to its 5 million recipients in December. Said he: "It has a great history, but times have changed." Now Sears, Ward's rival since 1894, will have the oldest general merchandise catalog...
...Brennan plays these constitutional power games with an institutional advantage. At the court's regular Friday conference, as senior Justice, he addresses his colleagues concerning cases immediately after Chief Justice Warren Burger. Burger's presentations are said to be brief and sketchy, Brennan's long, detailed and thoughtful. "The conference may disagree," says one former clerk, "but it is in terms Brennan established." Further, when he is in the majority and the chief is not, his senior status gives him the right to name the author of the court's opinion. Rather than taking all important decisions for himself, Brennan...
...some court watchers, Brennan's latter-day accomplishments outshine his early years and will mark him in history as one of the high bench's great dissenters. While a member of the Warren court majority, he was guilty of writing some "slapdash" opinions, says Stanford's Gunther. "To my taste Brennan has been a hell of a lot better since he's had to articulate his views in dissent." In those opinions he generally answers the majority point by point and lays out a narrow interpretation of the ruling, which can be helpful to those who later challenge it. Justice...
...intangible but hardly unimportant source of Brennan's power is his personal charisma. "He is universally respected, loved is not too strong a word," says a former clerk. Brennan is revered in part because of his reverence for the institution he serves. Columbia Law School Professor Gerard Lynch, a former Brennan clerk, says that he remains as delighted as ever by the fact that "ordinary people consider the Supreme Court the last bastion of justice and fairness...
...Brennan's advanced age (he will be 80 next April) has not tempered that enthusiasm. In the late '70s he suffered visibly while his first wife was losing a struggle with cancer. But he has been renewed by his 1983 marriage to his longtime secretary. In a May speech, reacting to reports that his seat might soon be vacant, he said with a twinkle, "I can't know, of course, what the good Lord may have in mind for me. But I can say that insofar as the suggestions contemplate my voluntary departure, like Mark Twain's reported death...