His comments about who plays "hard ball," with the Courts, is a deliberate lie. It wasn't just Republicans who stopped Fortas--LBJ's effort to control the Court. But from the lynching of Bork, the attempted lynching of Thomas, and the blockage of several other Conservative appointees in recent decades, the truth tells a very different story than Dean's.
And, for that matter, the Left blocked a Conservative appointee in 1930--Parker, I believe--who might have proven the vote to block FDR's massive debt default resulting from the arbitrary devaluation of the dollar, coupled with the repudiation of the contractual obligations in the gold clause bonds.
As for conflicts of interest? Look up the role of FDR's Felix Frankfurter, who was involved in setting up the ACLU, in Court decisions taking away religious freedom in American local school districts, etc.. (See, on this, Leftwing Word Games & 1st Amendment.)
William Flax
From Findlaw.com; Before becoming Counsel to the President of the United States in July 1970 at age thirty-one, John Dean was Chief Minority Counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, the Associate Director of a law reform commission, and Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He served as Richard Nixon’s White House lawyer for a thousand days.
He did his undergraduate studies at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science. He received a graduate fellowship from American University to study government and the presidency, before entering Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD in 1965.
John has long written on the subjects of law, government, and politics, and he recounted his days in the Nixon White House and Watergate in two books, Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). He lives in Beverly Hills, California with his wife Maureen, and now devotes full time to writing and lecturing, having retired from his career as a private investment banker.
I read an article about AJ William Brennan once, about the time his self-serving screed of an autobiography appeared (A Justice for All), that went into the formative role Frankfurter played in turning the Warren Court into a pigs' playground of left-wing legal positivism. Frankfurter never saw a clause of the Constitution he wasn't willing to screw with to help the Progs get what they wanted.
Frankfurter was all about the exaltation of Left politics over black-letter constitutional law.