Hugo Black: A Biography
Supreme Court Justice Black (1886-1971), a noted civil libertarian and populist, is done justice in this first comprehensive biography, written with the cooperation of his family. Newman, a former research scholar at New York University School of Law, recreates Black's youth in isolated Clay County, Ala., his move into law and politics in Birmingham and his election to the U.S. Senate in 1926. FDR's search for a liberal justice led him to appoint Black in 1937. On the Court, Black grew into a staunch defender of the Bill of Rights and, as one of his clerks wrote, a judge concerned most with "the human being involved." He battled with order-loving rival Felix Frankfurter to fight McCarthy-era speech restrictions and, as the 1960s began, became the country's foremost First Amendment absolutist. In 1963, he wrote the landmark right-to-counsel Gideon opinion, but, as the Warren Court continued its revolution, Black's "reformist zeal had sharply abated." Though Newman clearly admires his subject and effectively limns Black's private life, he also tracks the justice's evasions regarding his membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young man, notes the senator's "excess zeal" as an investigator and scores his illiberal opinion regarding the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.