United States Supreme Court, The: From the Inside Out

Ball, Howard

Cooper, Phillip J.

Rules & Procedures

Pearson College Div

Courts and politics: The Federal judicial system

Administrative Law

PRENTICE/HALL

Courts and Politics: The Federal Judicial System (2nd Edition)

Pearson

This is the astonishing story of how the United States exploded atomic weapons on its own soil. For over a decade, from 1951 to 1963, the U.S. government used the Nevada Test Site to detonate above-ground atomic bombs as part of its postwar military nuclear testing program. "Only" 100,000 people lived downwind of the test site, for the bombs were set off only when the wind was blowing in an easterly direction, that, away from California of Las Vegas. By 1982, over 1,100 people had sued the government for causing injury and wrongful death because the Atomic Energy Commision had acted negligently in implementing the testing. Although scientific knowledge about the hazards of low-level radiation was not extensive at the time, enough was known to have warranted concern. Indeed, immediately after one set of tests in 1953, thousands of sheep and cattle died. But AEC officials, fearful that any public outcry might shut down the program, not only downplayed the significance of the animals' deaths but even went so far as to perpetrate "a fraud on the Court" by hiding evidence that suggested possible connections between the sheep deaths and the nuclear fallout. By 1978 the "downwinders" were no longer concerned with animal deaths. By then most scientific studies had shown associations between the epidemic of childhood leukemia and other cancers and radioactive fallout. This book tells the story of the clash between a group of deeply religious, politically conservative, fiercely patriotic citizens and an overzealous independent regulatory agency bent on exercising its own power in the name of national security. Pressing their case in the courts and in Congress, the downwind plaintiffs learned they were no match for a government even now extremely reluctant to admit its responsibility. About the Author: Howard Ball is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Utah and author of many books, including Federal Regulatory Agencies and Courts and Politics.

Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s

History

Americas

Oxford University Press

Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, two of the towering Supreme Court justices of this century, formed a fascinating personal and professional relationship that lasted for more than 30 years, from the 1930s to the 1970s. Together, they were embroiled in some of the most momentous social, political, and economic conflicts in American history. While many observers of the Supreme Court have regarded them as having a uniquely close alliance at the core of the Warren Court, they were quite different jurists, marching to very distinct drummers. Of Power and Right tells the story of this curious relationship and the turbulent era in which it took place. Hugo Black was a much admired, congenial man. A gracious Southerner, he could be as hard and immovable as granite once he'd made up his mind. An ardent advocate of free speech and press, he was a Puritan who had difficulty accepting behavior outside his own personal standard of morality. For him, the fundamental issue was the power of the people to govern, first through the Constitution, and then, where the Constitution was not clear, through their elected officials. William O. Douglas was a very different man. Tough and even petulant, he could also be extremely shy and sensitive. A staunch defender of the Court and its role, he was often willing to plunge it into the middle of society's most divisive debates. He believed first and foremost in individual rights, and believed that the Court's most important job was keeping government off the backs of the people. Though close on and off the job, the two men frequently clashed over this fundamental difference between power and right. The Black-Douglas years saw unprecedented social and political upheavals, from the New Deal and the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War, and the Supreme Court was called upon time and again to reexamine and often fundamentally alter definitions of equality and liberty in every area of American life. Howard Ball and Phillip Cooper chronicle each man's confrontation with the issues before the court and the often heated debates that resulted. They develop the central tension in American political life between democratically exercised power and individual freedom that so often occupied Black and Douglas and about which they so often differed. In so doing, the authors paint a full and compelling portrait not just of Black and Douglas, but of the institution of the Supreme Court during these years, showing us a Court that is more human, more politically aware, and more diverse than we have traditionally seen. The friendship of Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, and the differences that divided them, provide a unique window on the Supreme Court and the society it serves.

Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Antiques & Collectibles

Based on interviews with all parties and on extensive archival research into the files of the Atomic Energy Commission, Justice Downwind tells the astonishing story of how the United States exploded atomic weapons on its own soil between the years 1951 and 1963 as part of a postwar military nuclear testing program. Concerned with the hazards of cancer and radioactive fallout, 1,100 citizens living downwind of the Nevada Testing Site, in an effort to expose the Atomic Energy Commission's negigence in implementing the testing, sued the government for causing injury and wrongful death. Fearful that public outcry might shut down the program, AEC officials, during the 1950s, downplayed any suggestion that the testing program might endanger the health of persons living downwind of the testing site. By 1978, scientific studies had demonstrated associations between the epidemic of childhood leukemia and other cancers in the region and radioactive fallout. Pressing their case in the courts and in Congress, the downwind plaintiffs found themselves up against a government that remains even today reluctant to admit its responsibility. This new paperback edition includes updated information on the 10th Circuit Court's recent decision to overturn Judge Jenkins's ruling against the Federal Government in the Allen v. the United States case, the dilemmas associated with risky technologies, and new medical studies that have discovered links between leukemia and radioactive fallout.

During his thirty-four year tenure as a Justice of the Supreme Court, Hugo L. Black demonstrated, in the words of one of his colleagues, "a true passion for the Constitution." At a moment's notice, in front of visiting students or a clutch of legal dignitaries, the Judge would whip his tattered copy of the Constitution from his coat pocket, flip through it to a particular passage and then, in a high voice, read the passage con vivace. And though Black began his political career in Alabama as the candidate of the Ku Klux Klan--with their help in 1926 he became a U.S. Senator--thirty years later, he would argue forcefully for an end to segregation in the South. In Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior, distinguished writer Howard Ball draws from Black's extensive files in the Library of Congress and on interviews with his colleagues on the Court, his law clerks, and his family to illuminate the enigmatic career of a man who became one of the twentieth century's most vigilant defenders of freedoms and liberty. Ball's examination of Black's life reveals a consummate politician who kept, in a safe beside his desk, the names, addresses, and backgrounds of all those who gave Black support from the time he ran for the county solicitor's job in Jefferson County, Alabama, through his two terms as a U.S. Senator. A fervent New Deal advocate, Black lent his support to F.D.R.'s court packing plan, and was one of the few who stood with the President until the measure's defeat in 1937. Less than one month later, F.D.R. rewarded Black by nominating him to the Supreme Court. Soon after Black's confirmation by the Senate, the story of his Klan membership spread across the nation, prompting Time magazine to write that "Hugo won't have to buy a robe, he can dye his white one black." One of Black's early opinions for the Court, however, changed most of the negative opinion about him. Writing for the majority in Chambers v. Florida, Black and his colleagues overturned charges against four African-American men unjustly accused of murder. In addition to Black's political and judicial career, Ball captures some of the great legal minds at work--Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, John M. Harlan II, and William J. Brennan--and their encounters with the tough Justice who was an immovable force when engaged in a constitutional battle. From Brown v. Board of Education and the first tests of the power of the federal courts to implement the Brown decision, to the height of McCarthyism and the national hysteria about Communism, to New York Times v. United States, the famous Pentagon Papers case in 1971 (Black's last opinion for the Court which defended a newspaper's First Amendment rights), Black emerges as a staunch defender of federalism and the primacy of the First Amendment, a strict, literal interpreter of the Constitution, and always proud to be a member of the Supreme Court. Throughout his life, Hugo Black's cockiness, sternness, and stubborn determination won him many critics. On every occasion, as Howard Ball shows, Black proved his critics wrong. He became a major presence in the Senate and one of the great Justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court.

Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Taking the Fight South provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if racial justice is to be fully realized. Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written dozens of books during his career, including the landmark biography of Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and the critically acclaimed Murder in Mississippi, chronicling the Mississippi Burning killings. In Taking the Fight South, arguably his most personal book, Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when, against the advice of friends and colleagues in New York, he and his Jewish family moved from the Bronx to Starkville, Mississippi, where he received a tenured position in the political science department at Mississippi State University. For Ball, his wife, Carol, and their three young daughters, the move represented a leap of faith, ultimately illustrating their deep commitment toward racial justice. Ball, with breathtaking historical authority, narrates the experience of his family as Jewish outsiders in Mississippi, an unfamiliar and dangerous landscape contending with the aftermath of the civil rights struggle. Signs and natives greeted them with a humiliating and frightening message: "No Jews, Negroes, etc., or dogs welcome." From refereeing football games, coaching soccer, and helping young black girls integrate the segregated Girl Scout troops in Starkville, to life-threatening calls from the KKK in the middle of the night, from his work for the ACLU to his arguments in the press and before a congressional committee for the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Ball takes the reader to a precarious time and place in the history of the South. He was briefly an observer but quickly became an activist, confronting white racists stubbornly holding on to a Jim Crow white supremacist past and fighting to create a more diverse, equitable, and just society. Ball's story is one of an imitable advocate who didn't just observe as a passive spectator but interrupted injustice. Taking the Fight South will join the list of required books to read about the Black Lives Matter movement and the history of racism in the United States. The book will also appeal to readers interested in Judaism because of its depiction of anti-Semitism directed toward Starkville's Jewish community, struggling to survive in the heart of the deep and very fundamentalist Protestant South.

Taking the Fight South: Chronicle of a Jew's Battle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

Community & Culture

University of Notre Dame Press

[ Judicial Craftsmanship or Fiat?: Direct Overturn by the United States Supreme Court Contributions in Political Science By ( Author ) Jun-1978 Hardcover

Judicial Craftsmanship or Fiat?: Direct Overturn by the United States Supreme Court (Contributions in Political Science)

Praeger

Compromised Compliance: Implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights ACT (Contributions in Political Science #66) [ Compromised Compliance: Implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights ACT (Contributions in Political Science #66) by Ball, Howard ( Author ) Hardcover Mar- 1982 ] Hardcover Mar- 15- 1982

Compromised Compliance: Implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Contributions in Political Science)

Krane, Dale

Lauth, Thomas

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