SUPPOSE you were doing a little research into the history of Supreme Court nominations, and you learned from one book that Grover Cleveland "bested Benjamin Harrison by almost 100,000 votes in the election of 1888, but the vagaries of the electoral college caused him to lose the election" (p. 130).

And then, browsing through a later book on the topic, you read that Harrison is remembered for "losing the popular election in 1888 by 100,000 votes and still managing to take the Oval Office from incumbent President Grover Cleveland through the vagaries of the Electoral College" (p. 63).

Perhaps you'd think it merely a matter of curious--but not impossible--chance that both authors had used the same, memorable phrase: "vagaries of the Electoral College."

Suppose, however, more curiously, that further along in the newer book was the following description of the controversy surrounding Harry Truman's 1949 nomination of Sherman Minton to the High Court: "several Senators called on Minton to appear before the Judiciary Committee. Minton declined the 'invitation' and said that he would stand on his record as a Senator and a federal appellate judge" (p. 84).

Those ironic quotation marks around the word "invitation" might seem familiar. And, sure enough, there they are--and then some--in the earlier book, as well: "Republican Senators Homer Ferguson of Michigan and Forrest C. Donnell of Missouri requested that Judge Minton appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to respond to questions. He declined the 'invitation,' noting that he would stand on his record as a Judge

By now, of course, your radar would be fully active, and you'd be scouring both books for telltale, otherwise inexplicable parallels. Like the phrase "Holmes mold," which appears in the later book as: "The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator George Norris, immediately made it clear to President Hoover that he and his fellow committee members, mostly Democrats and Progressive Republicans, would insist upon a liberal jurist in the Holmes mold" (p. 80).

In the earlier book, the same sentence can be found almost verbatim: "But almost at once the Chairman of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, George W. Norris, made it plain to the President that he and his fellow committeemen, largely Democrats and Progressive Republicans, would insist on a judicial liberal in the Holmes mold" (p. 191).

It would no longer seem just a coincidence that both books refer to Truman's "buddies" benefitting from a "crony appointment" (p. 224 in the older book and p. 68 in the newer)--followed by "Truman . . . liked them; he liked their politics" in one, and "Harry liked his friends, and he liked their politics" in the other (p. 224 and p. 69).

Or that the earlier book recounts how "Others were rather more specific" when they "urged Hoover to nominate Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals"--since, after all, the later book recounts much the same thing, in much the same language: "Others were more specific" when they "urged Hoover to nominate Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo of the New York Court of Appeals" in the newer (p. 191 and pp. 80-81).