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THE WARREN COURT AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

A CRITICAL ISSUE

Less an introduction to the Warren Court than a paean to it. Harvard law professor Horwitz developed the material for this very short book through teaching an undergraduate course on the subject. The result has little to offer readers who are familiar with the constitutional struggles of the past few decades, but may be of some use for those needing a primer, especially high-school and college students with little knowledge of the law. Horwitz finds a common biographical thread among the liberals who dominated the Supreme Court in the 1950s and ’60s: Warren, Black, Douglas, Brennan, Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall all came from “socially marginal” backgrounds, by reason of poverty, religion, or race. Without being reductionist, he contends that this psychological factor made the Warren Court majority more eager than previous courts to extend constitutional protection to racial, religious, and political minorities, criminal defendants, and the poor. It was the Warren Court that ruled school desegregation unconstitutional, applied the Bill of Rights to state criminal cases, compelled the states to apportion their legislatures on a “one-person, one-vote” basis, made dissent less dangerous by adopting Holmes’s “clear and present danger” test for political speech, discovered a constitutional right of privacy, made it virtually impossible to prosecute obscenity cases, greatly restricted libel actions, and found that welfare benefits were an entitlement rather than merely a privilege. However controversial these examples of judicial activism were (and still are), Horwitz’s approval of them is almost uncritical. Although he provides sympathetic analyses of Justice Frankfurter’s advocacy of judicial restraint and Justice Black’s departure from his liberal brethren over the issue of civil disobedience, Horwitz has produced a very narrow account of the Warren era. (He also, unfortunately, repeats the canard that Eisenhower traded the promise of a Supreme Court appointment for Warren’s support at the 1952 Republican Convention.)

Pub Date: June 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-8090-9664-1

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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