In 1945, when southern segregationist Judge J. Waties Waring turned civil rights activist, he became the first jurist in modern times to declare segregated schooling "inequality per se." Throughout his career he also ordered the equalization of teachers' salaries, outlawed South Carolina's white primary, and urged the complete breakdown of state-enforced bars to racial intermingling. Yarbrough examines the life and career of this fascinating but neglected jurist, assessing the controversy he generated and his place in the early history of the modern civil rights movement.
When appointed to the Supreme Court in 1970 by President Nixon, Harry A. Blackmun was seen as a quiet, safe choice to complement the increasingly conservative Court of his boyhood friend, Warren Burger. No one anticipated his seminal opinion championing abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, the most controversial ruling of his generation, which became the battle cry of both supporters and critics of judicial power and made Blackmun a liberal icon. Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice is Tinsley E. Yarbrough's penetrating account of one of the most outspoken and complicated figures on the Supreme Court. As a justice, Blackmun stood at the pinnacle of the American judiciary. Yet when he took his seat on the Court, Justice Blackmun felt "almost desperate," overwhelmed with feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy over the immense responsibilities before him. Blackmun had overcome humble roots to achieve a Harvard education, success as a Minneapolis lawyer and resident counsel to the prestigious Mayo Clinic, as well as a distinguished record on the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court. But growing up in a financially unstable home with a frequently unemployed father and an emotionally fragile mother left a permanent mark on the future justice. All his life, Harry Blackmun considered himself one of society's outsiders, someone who did not "belong." Remarkably, though, that very self-image instilled in the justice, throughout his career, a deep empathy for society's most vulnerable outsiders--women faced with unwanted pregnancies, homosexuals subjected to archaic laws, and ultimately, death-row inmates. To those who saw his career as the constitutional odyssey of a conservative jurist gradually transformed into a champion of the underdog, Blackmun had a ready answer: he had not changed; the Court and the issues before them changed. The justice's identification with the marginalized members of society arguably provides the overarching key to that consistency. Thoroughly researched, engagingly written, Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice offers an in-depth, revelatory portrait of one of the most intriguing jurists ever to sit on the Supreme Court. Relying on in-depth archival material, in addition to numerous interviews with Blackmun's former clerks, Yarbrough here presents the definitive biography of the great justice, ultimately providing an illuminating window into the inner-workings of the modern Supreme Court.
When the first President Bush chose David Hackett Souter for the Supreme Court in 1990, the slender New Englander with the shy demeanor and ambiguous past was quickly dubbed a "stealth candidate". Since his appointment, Souter has embraced a flexible, evolving, and highly pragmatic judicial style that embraces a high regard for precedent--even liberal decisions of the Warren and Burger Courts with which he may have personally disagreed. Ultimately, Yarbrough contends, Souter has become the principal Rehnquist Court opponent of the originalist, text-bound jurisprudence that many of the more conservative Justices profess to champion. Sifting through Souter's opinions, papers of the Justice's contemporaries and other relevant records and interviews, esteemed Supreme Court biographer Tinsley Yarbrough here gives us the real David Souter, crafting a fascinating account of one of the heretofore most elusive Justices in the history of the Court.
Admired by conservatives and deeply respected by his liberal brethren, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan was a man, as William Brennan lamented, whose "massive scholarship" has never been fully recognized. Now, in the first biography of this important but neglected jurist, Tinsley Yarbrough provides a detailed account of Harlan's life, from his privileged childhood to his retirement and death. Yarbrough examines the forces and events which shaped the Justice's jurisprudence--his early life and often complex family relationships, his education, his work as a prosecutor during the Prohibition, and years as one of the nation's preeminent corporate lawyers. The book focuses, however, on Harlan's years on the high bench. Coming at a time when the Supreme Court has begun to adopt many of Harlan's principles, this account provides an essential perspective on the Court, civil liberties, and a pivotal figure in the history of both.
In 1945, when southern segregationist Judge J. Waties Waring turned civil rights activist, he became the first jurist in modern times to declare segregated schooling "inequality per se." Throughout his career he also ordered the equalization of teachers' salaries, outlawed South Carolina's white primary, and urged the complete breakdown of state-enforced bars to racial intermingling. Yarbrough examines the life and career of this fascinating but neglected jurist, assessing the controversy he generated and his place in the early history of the modern civil rights movement.
Sifting through Souter's opinions and other relevant records and interviews, esteemed Supreme Court biographer Yarbrough reveals the real David Souter, crafting a fascinating account of one of the heretofore most elusive Justices in the history of the Court.
This book offers a revelatory portrait of one of the most intriguing jurists to sit on the American Supreme Court, and ultimately also provides an illuminating window into the inner workings of the modern Supreme Court.
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