"In Washington, the newly elected young President, Kerry Kilcannon, faces his first test: the sudden death of the Chief Justice of the United States has created a vacancy at the heart of a sharply divided Supreme Court. In San Francisco, an unknown fifteen-year-old girl, Mary Ann Tierney, presents a fateful request to the lawyer for an embattled women's clinic: she wants to sue for permission to have a late-term abortion over the opposition of her pro-life parents. In this confluence lie the seeds of a political and constitutional crisis that will shape the future of the Court, and of the powerful and powerless alike." "President Kilcannon resolves to nominate Caroline Master - a brilliant jurist shadowed by a personal secret - as the next Chief Justice. In the Senate, two men who hope to succeed Kilcannon hold the key to her nomination: Majority leader Macdonald Gage, and his bitter rival, Chad Palmer, a former military hero noted for his political independence. A hidden alliance between Kilcannon and Palmer is threatened when Mary Ann Tierney's inflammatory, nationally televised lawsuit thrusts the issue of abortion to the forefront of the Senate battle over the Masters nomination."--BOOK JACKET.