Making Civil Rights Law by Mark V Tushnet

Making Civil Rights Law by Mark V Tushnet

From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. 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. Making Civil Rights Law is an insightful and provocative narrative history of the legal struggle, led by Thurgood Marshall and the NACP Legal Defense Fund, which preceded the intense political battles for civil rights. Drawing on personal interviews with Thurgood Marshall and other NACP lawyers, as well as new information about the private deliberations of the Supreme Court, Tushnet tells the dramatic story of how the NACP Legal Defense Fund led the Court to use the Constitution as an instrument of liberty and justice for all African-Americans. He also offers new insights into how the justices argued among themselves about the historic changes they were to make in American society. Making Civil Rights Law provides a compelling portrait 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 NACP. It is an important andinformative work for lawyers, and students and scholars of American legal history and the history of the civil rights movement in the United States.

Supreme Court history at its bestIn a volume rich with documentation that is copious, appropriate, and helpful, few sources seem to have been overlooked. * Journal of Supreme Court History *
A monumental and fascinating piece of research written in language that you too can understand. * Nina Totenberg, Legal Affairs Correspondent, National Public Radio and ABC Nightline *
Dramatic and moving....Replete with new information and insights about Marshall and his times....The Marshall that rises from the pages of this book was a brilliant lawyer, a shrewd strategist and a prodigious psychologist. * Chicago Tribune *
Superb documentation, including interviews, letters, and manuscript collections. * Choice *

Mark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School, USA. He is the co-author of four casebooks, including the casebook on constitutional law most widely used in the United States, has written fourteen books, including a two-volume work on the life of Justice Thurgood Marshall, and has edited eight others. He was President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2003. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780195084122
ISBN 10	0195084128
Title	Making Civil Rights Law
Author	Mark V Tushnet
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	1994-05-19
Number of pages	412
Prizes	Winner of Winner of an American Bar Association Gavel Awards Certificate of Merit.
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.