John Marshall Harlan: The Last Whig Justice - Hardcover

Beth, Loren P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081311778X ISBN 13: 9780813117782

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 1992

Synopsis

Harlan. Known today to every student of constitutional law, principally for his dissenting opinions in early racial discrimination cases, Harlan was an important actor in every major public issue that came before the Supreme Court during his thirty-three-year tenure.

Named by a hopeful father for Chief Justice John Marshall, Harlan began his career as a member of the Kentucky Whig slavocracy. Loren Beth traces the young lawyer's development from these early years through the secession crisis and Civil War, when Harlan remained loyal to the Union, both as a politician and as a soldier. As Beth demonstrates, Harlan gradually shifted during these years to an antislavery Republicanism that still emphasized his adherence to the Whig principles of Unionism and national power as against states' rights.

Harlan's Supreme Court career (1877-1911) was characterized by his fundamental disagreement with nearly every judicial colleague of his day. His ultimate stance―as the Great Dissenter, the champion of civil rights, the upholder of the powers of Congress―emerges as the logical outgrowth of his pre-Court life. Harlan's significance for today's reader is underlined by the Supreme Court's adoption, beginning in the 1930s, of most of his positions on the Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

This fine biography is also an important contribution to constitutional history. Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars will come from its pages with renewed appreciation for one of our judicial giants.

About this title

About the Author

Loren P. Beth is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Georgia and author of The Development of the American Constitution, 1877-1917.

From the Back Cover

Although he ranks as one of the most prominent Supreme Court Justice of his or any other period, this is the first major biographical treatment of John Marshall Harlan. This fine biography is also an important contribution to constitutional history. Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars will come from its pages with renewed appreciation for one of our judicial giants.

Reviews

John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911), an associate justice of the Supreme Court, is remembered for his liberal dissents on a conservative court. Political science professor at the University of Georgia, Beth has written a well-researched study of Harlan's life with the emphasis on his career. Covered are Harlan's years in Kentucky as a lawyer and politician who began as a Whig, switched parties several times and finally wound up as a Republican Party organizer whose political savvy earned him a Supreme Court seat during the Hayes Administration. Although he fought on the Union side during the Civil War, Harlan was no abolitionist. He owned slaves and opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. Once on the court, however, his views changed dramatically. He dissented in civil rights cases that eroded the rights of blacks to equal protection and supported the rights of defendants to due process. An academic, richly detailed biography of an important jurist. Illustrations not seen by PW.

Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081311778X
• ISBN 13: 9780813117782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328