| The Great Dissenter - The Story Of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero (2021) |
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| Description |
| The definitive, sweeping biography of an American hero who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to fight for civil rights and economic freedom: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. They say that history is written by the victors. But not in the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court. Almost a century after his death, it was John Marshall Harlan’s words that helped end segregation, and gave us our civil rights and our modern economic freedom. But his legacy would not have been possible without the courage of Robert Harlan, a slave who John’s father raised like a son in the same household. After the Civil War, Robert emerges as a political leader. With Black people holding power in the Republican Party, it is Robert who helps John land his appointment to the Supreme Court. At first, John is awed by his fellow justices, but the country is changing. Northern whites are prepared to take away black rights to appease the South. Giant trusts are monopolizing entire industries. Against this onslaught, the Supreme Court seemed all too willing to strip away civil rights and invalidate labor protections. As case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the nation’s prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the United States. Harlan’s dissents, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson, were widely read and a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall called Harlan’s Plessy dissent his “Bible”—and his legal roadmap to overturning segregation. In the end, Harlan’s words built the foundations for the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. Spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, The Great Dissenter is an epic rendering of the American legal system’s greatest failures and most inspiring successes. |
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| Notes/Review |
| I sometimes need to make a conscious effort to separate what I think of the book from what I think of the subject. In this case, both the book and the subject are excellent. John Marshall Harlan was an associate justice on the Supreme Court for 34 years, starting in late 1877. During that time, the Court handed down several rulings that rank as the Court's worst in our history. Harlan was often the only dissenting opinion. Many of these cases reverberated through the decades and his dissents are now the mainstream thought. Subjects included race relations, taxation, and worker protections. One can't help but think how different our history would be had his colleagues seen these cases the same way he did. The book is thoroughly researched and easy to read. Best of all, Canellos spends quite a bit of time providing the background that answers the question "Why did Harlan hold those views?" We reach the end of Harlan's life well before we reach the end of the book. I've read many whole-life biographies that end with a funeral. Harlan's legacy didn't end with his funeral - those last couple of chapters go over that legacy, including a discussion of some historical revisionism. Highly recommended. |