{"product_id":"hugo-l-black-cold-steel-warrior-9780195078145","title":"Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior","description":"\u003cp\u003eDuring 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 moments 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 Blacks 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 centurys most vigilant defenders of freedoms and liberty. Balls examination of Blacks 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 solicitors 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 measures defeat in 1937. Less than one month later  F.D.R. rewarded Black by nominating him to the Supreme Court. Soon after Blacks confirmation by the Senate  the story of his Klan membership spread across the nation  prompting Time magazine to write that \"Hugo wont have to buy a robe  he can dye his white one black.\" One of Blacks 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 Blacks 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 (Blacks last opinion for the Court which defended a newspapers 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 Blacks 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647582691381,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195078144","price":34.07,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195078145.jpg?v=1781694122","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/hugo-l-black-cold-steel-warrior-9780195078145","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}