From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality - Hardcover

Klarman, Michael J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195129032 ISBN 13: 9780195129038

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

A monumental investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow To Civil Rights spells out in compelling detail the political and social context within which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of their decisions for American race relations. In a highly provocative interpretation of the decision's connection to the civil rights movement, Klarman argues that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. Brown unquestioningly had a significant impact--it brought race issues to public attention and it mobilized supporters of the ruling. It also, however, energized the opposition. In this authoritative account of constitutional law concerning race, Michael Klarman details, in the richest and most thorough discussion to date, how and whether Supreme Court decisions do, in fact, matter.

About this title

About the Author

Michael J. Klarman is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia. After graduating from Stanford Law School, Klarman clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg and then earned his D. Phil. from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his spouse, Lisa Landsverk, and their four children.

Reviews

Klarman, a constitutional law professor, offers a highly accessible analysis of the interplay between the Supreme Court and U.S. race relations. While focusing on particular legal decisions, he looks at the broader context, the social, political, and international forces that have influenced the path of racial progress from the turn of the nineteenth century, when segregation was the law of the land, until it was outlawed by the Brown decision. Klarman points to countervailing forces that impacted the ruling and might even have brought about the same end. Those forces included the civil rights movement, political power shifts of the black northern demographic, and competition for the hearts and minds of Third World nations during the cold war. Klarman reflects on litigation as a form of protest and education in the civil rights era but suggests that the Brown decision may have been more detrimental than beneficial because it galvanized white opposition to desegregation. Vernon Ford
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Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195129032
• ISBN 13: 9780195129038
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 672