Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.83 (802 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0195084128 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-02 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Very informative but dry This book is a decisive history of Thurgood Marshall's actions and the effects that he had on the civil rights of African-Americans while he worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His successes, failures, and discussions of his effects make it a very informative book. It is quite obvious that the author spent a great amount of time researching his topic of choice. The book is absolutely full of quotes
Making Civil Rights Law provides an overall picture of the forces involved in civil rights litigation, bringing clarity to the legal reasoning that animated this "Constitutional revolution", and showing how the slow development of doctrine and precedent reflected the overall legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had to strike down the Alabama law which made segregated bus service required by law; before Martin Luther King could march on Selma to register voters, the Supreme Court had to find unconstitutional the Southern Democratic Party's exclusion of African-Americans; and before the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court had to strike down the laws allowing for the segregation of public graduate schools, colleges, high schools, and grade schools. From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. He also offers new insights into how the justices argued among themselves about the historic changes they were to make in American society. Drawing on interviews with Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, as well as new information about the private deliberations of the Supreme Court, Tushnet tells the dramatic story of how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the Court to use the Constitution as an instrument of liberty an
A professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Tushnet draws on a wealth of materials--including newly available documents and interviews with Marshall himself--to provide a substantial, if dry, account for students and scholars. He also provides a thorough account of the ideas and arguments of the individual justices who heard Brown , including the decision to reach the much criticized formulation of desegregation at "all deliberate speed." Marshall, observes Tushnet with judicious admiration, "constructed the job of civil rights lawyer" beginning in 1938, but by the late 1950s, he notes, the growth of a larger movemen