front cover of Justice Hugo Black and Modern America
Justice Hugo Black and Modern America
Tony Freyer
University of Alabama Press, 1990

            The struggle to accommodate both individual freedom and community welfare shaped modern America. American have disagreed about whether federal protection of national welfare could be reconciled with defense of individual rights; however, no public figure worked longer or more consistently to meet this challenge than Alabama’s Hugo L. Black

            This collection of essays, reprints of the spring 1985 and winter 1987 issues of the Alabama Law Review with a new introduction and minor revisions, suggests that Black’s constitutional principles and personal values provided a means to achieve a balance between majority will and individual freedom. Black’s life and career are reexamined here by leading scholars and jurors in the first major study in twenty years, tracing his relationship to the South, to the development of American liberalism, and to the constitutional revolution in individual rights.
            Contributors include, in addition to the editor, Howard Ball, Justice William Brennan, Jr., Irving Dilliard, Gerald Dunne, Harry Edwards, Arthur Goldberg, Sheldon Hackney, Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton, Jean McCulley Holcomb, Anthony Lewis, Paul L. Murphy, Timothy O’Rourke, Norman Redlich, David Shannon, Abigail Thernstrom, Cherry Thomas, J. Mills Thornton III, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

 


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front cover of Mr. Justice Black and His Critics
Mr. Justice Black and His Critics
Tinsley E. Yarbrough
Duke University Press, 1988
Many jurists give lip service to the idea that judicial interpretation of constitutional provisions should be based on the intent of the framers. Few, if any, have been as faithful to that conception as Hugo Black. As U.S. senator from Alabama, Black was a vigorous critic of the Supreme Court's use of the Constitution as a weapon against the Roosevelt New Deal. Once on the court he played a leading role in overturning those decisions and in attempting to establish for freedom of speech and other guarantees the interpretation he (and others) believe was warranted by the language and intent of the framers.
Late in his career, however, Black's commitment to literalism and intent led him to assume apparently conservative positions in civil liberties cases. In an era characterized by growing acceptance of the belief that judges should adapt the Constitution to changing social and ethical perceptions, many came to regard Black's position as unrealistic and irrelevant.
Tinsley E. Yarbrough analyzes Black's judicial and constitutional philosophy, as well as his approach to specific cases, through the eyes of Black's critics (such as Justices Frankfurter and Harlan) and through an assessment of scholarly opinion of his jurisprudence. The result is a stimulating and provocative addition to the study of Justice Black and the Supreme Court.
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