Armand Derfner and Orville Vernon Burton -- Justice Deferred

Armand Derfner and Orville Vernon Burton

Justice Deferred

Race and the Supreme Court

(Harvard, hb., 464 pp.)

About the book:
Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence. Addressing nearly two hundred cases involving America’s racial minorities, the authors probe the parties involved, the justices’ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings. We learn of heroes such as Thurgood Marshall; villains, including Roger Taney; and enigmas like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history also reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the country’s promise of equal rights for all.

About the authors:
Orville Vernon Burton is the prizewinning author of several books, including The Age of Lincoln. He is Judge Matthew J. Perry Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University and Emeritus University Scholar and Professor of History at the University of Illinois.

Armand Derfner has been a civil rights lawyer for over fifty years. He has been counsel for, among others, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and helped desegregate university systems and legislatures across the South. He argued his first Supreme Court case in 1968.