The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero

by Peter S. Canellos

The “superb” ( The Guardian ) biography of an American who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to fight for civil rights and economic 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, John Marshall Harlan’s words 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. So as case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful 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 US.

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 a “magnificent” (Douglas Brinkley) and “thoroughly researched” ( The New York Times ) rendering of the American legal system’s most significant failures and most inspiring successes.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Law, American History, Politics, Biography Memoir

609 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this biography fascinating. The book is about John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911). Harlan is remembered for three outstanding dissents in the Court’s most disconcerting rulings. He is the lone dissenting vote (8-1) in Plessy V Ferguson in 1896. This is “the separate but equal” doctrine.

I found the sections of the Court battles about income tax and labor laws most interesting and in many ways the arguments have not changed. Particularly the reasons the rich gave for why the rent payments they received should not be taxed or why government had no right to tell them to limit employee’s hours to no more than twelve hours per day. I found it most helpful to pause and see where the Court has been before in controversial discissions.

The author, Peter Canellos, did an excellent job researching information for this book and presenting a fairly unbiased report. If you are looking for a great biography to read this summer, try this book.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is nineteen hours and twenty-three minutes. Arthur Morey does a good job narrating the book.

[Colleen Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the biography of one of the most important and dedicated Justices of the Supreme Court who consistently stood up for African Americans when no one else would. He was the only dissenting voice in the Civil Rights cases in the 1880's and the beliefs that led him to take his position then would lead him in the same direction throughout his life on the Court. He was alone in his dissent on Plessy, on Lochner, and on a myriad of other cases. He also stood against the titans of big business that dominated the Republican Party during the Gilded Age but he is best known as a justice whose dedication to the constitutional ideas about equality, particularly in the Civil War Amendments shine. While the rest of the court was busy denying the purpose of the Amendments, Harlan was fighting for what he knew was right.

Canellos does an admirable job of tracing Harlan's life on the bench and the events that dominated the United States during his lifetime and his research is impeccable. Even several right wing justices, including Scalia, Roberts, and Gorsuch claiming him as an originalist but their reasons for aligning themselves with him in that respect are seriously suspect.

A man, born into slavery in Harlan's house, Robert is also highlighted because the two were so close and because there was a belief among many that they were half brothers. Although that now appears unlikely, the two could have been. Robert was a highly successful man who advocated for John as John advocated for him.

In my opinion, Harlan has not been given proper credit for his courage and for the intelligence he demonstrated in his dissents. Those dissents, particularly the one from Plessy v Ferguson are still frequently quoted by advocates for equal rights, but unfortunately, the public at large seems to have little knowledge of him. This book, in my opinion, is an excellent biography of Harlon and and excellent source of information about his times.

[E. Nicholas Mariani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been waiting for someone to write the definitive biography of John Marshall Harlan for some time now. And, boy, this did not disappoint. A great book about a remarkable man. Who's John Marshall Harlan, you might ask? When the United States Supreme Court delivered its infamous verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson, sanctioning "separate but equal" and giving rise to Jim Crow, the decision came down 8-1. Eight justices joined the majority, one dissented. John Marshall Harlan was the one. Sixty years later, Thurgood Marshall would refer to Harlan's dissent as his "Bible," citing it often in legal briefs as he began his legendary crusade to dismantle segregation. Harlan's life is a testament to the rarest kind of courage -- the kind required to fight losing battles, to stare down the prejudice of one's own time, all while knowing you're destined to lose, but with the faintest of hope that you might be vindicated in posterity. More than a century after Harlan's death, his words and deeds have been more than vindicated. They are the law of the land and represent our highest ideals while speaking to the very best in us. It's a crime his name isn't more well known. Everyone should read this book. Highly recommend.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Marshall Harlan was a Kentuckian like me, and was born and raised in the town where I live and work. To have not known any of this history was a major gap in my knowledge and I'm so glad that the book was not only informative but really well-written.

Harlan was an American hero, and one of the great men who served on the Supreme Court.

[David Eppenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suspect that this book will prove to be the best and most enlightening history that I will have read this year. While the book purports to be a biography of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan it is a great deal more than that. The book is also a fair biography of the justice's suspected Afro-American half brother Robert Harlan as well as the rest of the Harlan family starting with the justice's father James. It also does a more than interesting job of portraying the politics of our mid-19th century and into the 20th century. In the course of doing all that we are given a history of the social and economic issues that arose after the Civil War that seemed to reach the supreme court about the time that Harlan was appointed in 1877. This was just the first half of the book as the second half gets into what the reader was probably expecting in a biography of this man.

Of course the cases that Harlan was faced with are dealt with but not in a language only a lawyer would understand. No, the author gives the reader the basic issue of each of these noteworthy cases and then what the court decision was. The author, however, also gives us details about the personalities and backgrounds of the other justices hearing these cases and supplies the reader with the motivations for why the decision was reached and why it was so wrong. I so wish that constitutional law had been taught with some of this detail as it would have made the course I endured in law school more understandable. Unfortunately, Con Law was taught more like it was a science with predictable logical outcomes when it is anything but. Law is a human creation and consequently imperfect and this book more than makes that clear. The author does a wonderful job of treating a subject like supreme court decisions in a manner that will be appreciated by most laymen and for that he should commended.

The end of the book dwells on Justice Harlan's legacy and how his prescience became the basis for a 20th century revolution of constitutional law. Harlan's dissent in Plessy v Ferguson was embraced as the Holy Scripture of the Civil Rights movement and the basis for the decision in Brown v Board of Education. His beliefs regarding the 14th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause were relied upon by the Warren Court many of its decisions in the criminal justice cases decided by that court. Indeed there is a very great deal to be learned from this biography of a little recognized giant of the legal profession and American History. Enjoy.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book about one of the more important Supreme Court Justices in American history. While he isn't as well known as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph Story, or many of the Chief Justices, Harlan was one of the premier Justices on the Court.

He was also one of the more controversial figures of his day.

Harlan dissented in numerous significant court cases during his tenure. He was the only Justice to rule in favor of Plessy when the Court made "Separate but equal" the law of the land. He dissented in the "Civil Rights cases" which allowed for private entities to engage in segregation. He dissented in Pollock v Farmers Loan and Trust (which struck down federal income taxes), US v EC Knight (which hampered the government's anti-trust powers), Standard Oil v US.

Harlan was the first Justice to advocate that the Bill of Rights apply at the state level.

Harlan was a strong advocate for a Federal Government, he believed that the Civil War and Reconstruction redefined the role the government played in politics. He was also ahead of his time when it comes to black rights. This was undoubtedly a result of one of older brothers Robert. Robert was half black and born into slavery, but raised as a sibling. John saw the injustices inflicted on Robert. His exclusion from education or employment opportunities, due to his race.

While Harlan believed the Court had power to affect legislation, he also believed that the Court should listen to the wishes of the legislation. His views typically supported a strong central government, economically disadvantaged, and African Americans.

While I enjoyed the book and enjoyed learning about Harlan, this is not a book that sticks with me. It never really struck a chord with me.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best biographies and histories I've read in some time. As a lawyer and historian, I am so glad I know more about both John Marshall Harlan and Robert James Harlan, more than just the lone dissent in Plessy v. Fergusson. Canellos, a reporter and lawyer, does a marvelous job intertwining the biographies of JM Harlan and RJ Harlan, both men exemplars of 19th century American. RJ Harlan was likely JM's half-brother, sharing the same (white) father, while RJ's mother was an enslaved Black woman. RJ went on to fame and fortune both in business and a judger of horseflesh. He was also a member of the small Black elite and a force in Republican politics through the end of Reconstruction. Canellos argues persuasively that JM's long, equitable relationship with RJ is what brought JM from being a fierce Unionist but accepting (if not endorsing) slavery as a way to hold the country together, to a fierce protector of minority rights under the Constitution. As a lawyer, I particularly admired how Canellos explained JM's distinct and consistent view of the law and the Constitution (unlike his SCOTUS colleagues who used equal protection to deny Blacks rights while thwarting labor laws and threats to business). This is how JM can be a hero to justices as diverse as Thurgood Marshall and Antonin Scalia. RJ was a great American in his own right and his story deserves to be known, but because of his place on SCOTUS, JM Harlan is truly in the pantheon of great Americans.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed half of this book. It provides fascinating insight into many of the notorious Supreme Court decisions that occurred after the Civil War, and prevented civil rights protections for the next 50-60 years. The lone dissenter on the Court was Justice Harlan, a Kentuckian from a slave-owning family. The second half of the book covers his time on the court, and provides clear background and description of the cases. There is also a very nice discussion of Harlan's legacy, as these rulings are eventually overturned. The first half of the book, however, I found to be a great slog, in which the author never seemed to have a detail that he didn't love. I appreciate the need to provide some background on Harlan's experiences, and the inclusion of his mixed race brother(?) was important, I think this could have been edited way down to improve the flow of the narrative, and speed the story along without sacrificing context. Recommended for history buffs, but if you find yourself getting bogged down, I recommend just skipping ahead to Part II.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

An exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) tribute to a prophetic Supreme Court Justice, whose discernment of the spirit of the Constitution and its Civil War Amendments allowed him to see beyond the bigotry and self-righteousness of his colleagues on the Court. Despite its worthy subject, I found the book long-winded, repetitive and, at times, overly defensive about Justice Harlan's deservedly esteemed place in American history.

[Andrew Englund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter S. Canellos does a wonderful job detailing Justice John Marshall Harlan’s life and legal legacy. Despite growing up in a slave-holding family in Kentucky, Harlan was the fiercest advocate for Black Americans’ equal rights on the bench. He was the only one of forty-three justices to understand the Reconstruction Amendments. Yet, this isolated posture in no way muted his criticism. Harlan vociferously decried the majority’s incorrect and racist interpretations in both written and oral dissent. And over the last century, as the Supreme Court overturned many of its decisions in which Harlan dissented, history has shown him to be unparalleled in his understanding of the Constitution and of Reconstruction. 4.5/5

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Americans often fondly remember the loners, the dissenters, those who swam against the current and suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in their own time, only to achieve glory well after they have returned to dust. John Marshall Harlan, a Justice of the Supreme Court in the last quarter of the 19th and first quarter of the 20th Century, deserves a hallowed place in the hall of great dissenters, as Peter Canellos relates in "The Great Dissenter."

Harlan's name has largely been lost to history, and what a shame that is! Beginning with his dissent in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, Harlan staked out a lone position in arguing that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, as well as legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1875, were not mere puffery, but rather ironclad protections afforded to African Americans recently escaped from bondage and still suffering discrimination and degradation throughout the South and North. The dissents poured forth in later years, from standing against the "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, to upholding the federal government's power to tax income in Pollock, to standing against an activist judiciary that struck down worker-friendly legislation in the so-called Lochner era, to proffering a robust American republican spirit that knew no colonialist distinctions. Harlan was very often the lone voice in the woods, setting forth an eloquent defense of American exceptionalism that takes Jefferson's "all men are created equal" and expands to all Americans, no matter what color, creed or religion.

Canellos' book is not a traditional biography; rather, it's a dual look into the lives of John Marshall Harlan and his half-brother, Robert Harlan, an African-American who managed, despite all the handicaps of being black in American society in the 1800s, to find success and fame in pursuits as widely varied as horse racing, grocery retailing, and politics. Canellos delves deep into the lives of both Harlans, tracking John's rise in Kentucky politics and an eventual seat on the Supreme Court as well as Robert's transatlantic doings in horse racing and Republican politics. Later on, Canellos paints striking vignettes of each major case that Harlan presided over, including a fascinating look at the Schipp case, the rare Supreme Court case where the highest court in the land sat as a jury and found a sheriff in Tennessee guilty of allowing a local white mob to lynch a African American wrongly accused of raping a white woman. The narrative is so varied and kaleidoscopic that it loses momentum in certain spots; however, the varied storytelling also serves to refresh and vivify the life of Harlan, the cases he dissented in, and the afterlife of those dissents.

In the 21st Century, Harlan has attained mythic status among current and contemporary justices. Justices as varied as Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor have favorably cited Harlan and his dissents, finding him to be a lodestar of American jurisprudence rather than a distant, dimly lit star in the background.

In his Plessy dissent, Harlan famously wrote that "the humblest is the peer of the most powerful." Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison did not bring forth that populist ideology, but they did plant the seeds reaped by Harlan and future generations that sought to open the pursuit of happiness to every single American.

Let us hope fervently that Canellos' book resurrects the reputation of Harlan beyond law professors and lawyers, as well as justices more in the mold of his robust, common-sense-filled, and focus on how the law is personal experience, not merely cold, dry logic.

[Poet Lariat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot speak highly enough of this book. First of all, the writing is limpid, simple, compelling. Second, the many, MANY, parallels to the tensions in American society today are obvious.
As Reconstruction ground to a shameful halt, Harlan was raised to the Supreme Court, the sole Southerner on the court and the only one not beholden to wealthy capitalist and corporate interests. In a first major case, when the Supreme Court eviscerated the Civil Rights Act of 1875, he wrote a carefully reasoned dissent, the lone dissent, that was prescient and resonated throughout black America and the abolitionist north. When he wrote a dissent in a decision about a case that struck down a federal tax on the wealthy, his fame among common working people spread wide. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame, however, was being the lone dissenter in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case (which established “separate but equal” segregation). Canellos’s careful construction of the times and the issues, and his subsequent spelling out of Harlan’s legal reasonings, are thrilling and easy to follow.
An unsuspected huge bonus of the book is that it is actually a dual biography. Harlan had a half-brother Robert, who was half black, and whose life reads like a picaresque novel, due to Robert’s intelligence, initiative, and humanity in dealing with the prejudices of the time. Robert goes off to make a fortune in the California gold rush, travels down the Mississippi on paddle wheelers where he learned the ways of gamblers and con men in his efforts to locate and free his black mother in Louisiana, raises racing horses in Kentucky and brings his stable to England to compete with the greatest, returns after the Civil War and enters the political arena in counterpoint to his brother’s political efforts, and suffers his own setbacks within the circle of Black elites of the time and the political arena.....

Highly recommended, to say the least.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Marshall Harlan is one of those historical figures so fascinating and important that I was surprised never to have heard of him before reading this book This book turns out effectively to be a dual biography, as it is impossible to understand John Harlan's life story without also knowing that of Robert Harlan, whose life story is likewise worth telling in its own right. Between the two, we get a case study of what it takes to be on the right side of history when history is at its worst

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am back from taking a reading break for the past couple months. I chased one of my MMORPG phases until I got absolutely bored and I'm glad I'm recovered. Now I can obsessively read instead, which is much more healthy ha. After picking carefully through the non-fiction selection of my local library (passing titles such as The Real Anthony Fauci and Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government) I settled on the biography of a character I had never heard of: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. The blurb of The Great Dissenter described him as An American who stood against all the forces of the Guilded Age America to fight for civil rights and economic freedom.

The Great Dissenter follows the life of John Marshall Harlan from a boy in the border state Kentucky in the tempestuous years leading up to the Civil War, through his change of heart from merely maintaining the peace between North and South to adamantly advocating for the civil rights of African Americans and minorities as a lone voice on the Supreme Court.

The book revisits many of the Supreme Court cases I had learned in my U.S. history courses in high school, for example, Plessy v. Ferguson. The Plessy case established the doctrine of "separate but equal" that put a rubber stamp on segregation that defined the Jim Crow era and ended the hopes of black Americans during Reconstruction. That doctrine would be the law of the land for another sixty years until Brown v Topeka Board of Education ruled that "Separate education facilities are inherently unequal." What happened during that time in between? What happened to the ideals that inspired the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments? How could you read those any other way than giving equal rights to all Americans? This book calls out the "fig leaves" that Americans as well as the Supreme Court used to hide the racism that blotted the history of the United States. It didn't go unaddressed on that court, as Justice Harlan gave ringing dissents that became the legal basis for a next generation of activists and justices.

I found several inspiring themes throughout the book:

A moderate stance in politics isn't always a moral one. I understand calls for moderation myself, as I have made that plea as well. But I think there are times in history when right is wholly on one side and moderation is in itself immoral. What is a moderate position between slavery and abolition? You don't hindsight to make a judgment. It was calls for moderation that led many like Harlan to embrace slavery as a necessary evil:

In the past, when confronted with a deeply polarizing conflict, he gravitated to the center, seeking to bridge divisions by offering a half loaf to each side. Now, in the wake of war, those disputes were no longer understandable or tolerable to him. No longer was the Constitution ambiguous. Law and wisdom and enlightenment were all on one side.

The Republican party quickly sacrificed their high-minded ideals after the war in a pragmatic bid of making peace with the South as well as favoring business interests that disliked government intervention in business interests. The Supreme Court had the task of interpreting the new post-war Amendments of the Constitution that ended slavery and extended equal treatment under the law to blacks. But they quickly dissolved any progress in a mire of legal technicalities. In Harlan's first 8-1 dissent in The Civil Rights Cases of 1883, Harlan wrote of his co-justices: I cannot resist the conclusion that the substance and spirit of the recent amendments of the Constitution have been sacrificed by a subtle and verbal criticism.

In Plessy v. Ferguson, his dissent again called out his fellow justices and Americans: The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country, but in the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. Harlan stated in his dissents what should be true and what was written in law, but the rest of white Americans chose to ignore.

You recoil reading some of the opinions of his fellow justices. While they often tried to couch their justifications for racism in technical terms, the prejudice isn't far from the surface. In The Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the majority opinion says that black eventually need to give up the crutch of government support. This being in the midst of the dismantling of the rights of black Americans and the institutionalization of Jim Crow:

When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation, has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorites of the laws.

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the majority assert that blacks choose to feel inferior when they are separated from whites. Talk about victim-blaming:

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it.

Also in Plessy, the majority assert that racism is only natural and can't be addressed by law:

Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.

While Justice Harlan didn't live to see these opinions overturned, his dissent were eventually acknowledged as correct.

[Charles Wynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book. I have read many U.S. history books, and rarely have I found any to be as engaging, approachable, well-researched, and nuanced as this was. John Marshall Harlan has quickly become one of my heroes, a man who in my opinion rivals Washington and Lincoln as a hero of this country. That being said, Canellos does not hesitate to shed light on Harlan's flaws. I would recommend this book to everyone, especially now.

[Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a real fight to not dnf (did not finish). A substantial part of the book was about Justice John Harlan’s presumed half brother, a Black slave, freed by their father and educated at home when not accepted into public school. Robert Harlan was indeed remarkable and I understood some of the emphasis in the book. Clearly, growing up with a Black man who achieved the heights of Black society and economic success impacted Justice Harlan. But that wasn’t the Harlan I was interested in and I found it terribly tough sloughing. If, like me, you are interested in Justice Harlan’s law, skip straight to Book two and read from there. You will still get the basic point of how much impact Robert had on the justice’s life and law.

The best chapter by far, was the Ed Johnson case. It was a fascinating account of the one time in its history that the Supreme Court sat as a trial court. While tragic for the victim, who was lynched, it did produce some justice by jailing at least one of the criminals.

Im glad I know more about this remarkable justice. I’ll have to look for a book that is better written and keeps the focus on the justice’s dissents. More of a 2.75 than a straight 2. I’ll see when I reread this review if I feel merciful and raise the stars on this well documented but far too long biography.

[Frank Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly wonderful biography of John Marshall Harlan. It does a great job of depicting his life and how his early life led to his incredible dissents while a Supreme Court justice. His sole dissent to Plessy vs. Ferguson later became the blueprint to Brown vs. Board of Education. And that was but one of a series of lone dissents that have since become the law of the land - the income tax, trust law to name two. This book gives a real taste of how far from the true interests of the people of this country the Supreme Court has often been. The Warren court now seems to be a momentary bright spot in an otherwise horrific Supreme Court presence.

[Mich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well written biography of Justice John Marshall Harlan whose dissents in Plessy vs. Ferguson and other civil rights cases at the end of the 19th century form the basis for the eventual overturning of segregation and Jim Crow laws. Interweaved with his story is that of Robert Harlan a freed slave who was raised in the same household as John. Robert Harlan became an owner of race horses and a wide raging entrepreneur. But it was John Harlan whose life story make this such a worthwhile read.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit wordy at times but otherwise a phenomenal autobiography. I learned more about civil-war era politics & the aftermath that followed through this book than any other book I've read about this era.

[Jason Hackney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me a little longer to read as the first 250 pages were a template out of a white hero's biography before the Civil War. The template is stale and I've read it a hundred times. White man from privileged background becomes something important and he is different because he knew/related to/or took in a person of color. This first third of this book was a slog due to this outdated script in which I found even the upbringing of John Marshall Harlan uninspiring (wanted to keep the Union together over abolition slavery), was a political moderate (the worst kind of politico), had a assumed half black brother who lived in the shadows (His story was more interesting in how he overcame massive odds to become as successful as he did and his later generations dwindled to abject poverty due to segregation and discrimination throughout the decades after Reconstruction.), and got his Supreme Court position as a political favor and winning geographic homeland. Also, John Marshall Harlan's parents were not at all on the cutting edge of original names for their offspring (John, James, Robert, Robert Junior, John Marshall Harlan II, etc.) This also led to a confusing flurry of what each unremarkable sibling did, save Robert, in the posh antebellum regions of Kentucky.

After you slog through the descriptive biography of mostly John, Robert, and their predecessors, you get to the meat of the book that was a bit more tasty. If the first 250 pages was a luke-warm hamburger from Mickey D's to fill your gullet, then the rest of the book was slightly overdone T-Bone steak that pairs well with a southern BBQ sauce.

John Marshall Harlan really took a hardline on the true meaning of legislation and post-war Amendments (13-15). This was most likely because of the influence of seeing his possible half brother Robert accomplish more than most whites. Credit Robert and the African-American experience. Current day ghouls like Roberts, Scalia, and Gorsuch try to imply or claim they are in the direction of Harlan, but we know that if their sorry asses were planted in the later half of the 1800s and early 1900s, they too would be relegated to the dust bin of history as being more of the same stogey white men that favored the oppressors of race and labor. You can already see these cretins in action with their rulings now, such as Shelby County v. Holder. At any rate, Harlan held a lonely position for some 80-odd years on civil rights and about 50 years on the issue of classism/labor.

Harlan's dissenting opinions were the seeds in which the modern civil rights movement and making the filthy oligarchs pay rested for legal arguments. It also shows once again that what is considered "radical" in normal oppressive American life is actually right. The lag time between Americans realizing what is really radical and what is really right is glacially slow and uncomplete as we can look around and see fatbacks still not up to speed on how to treat other human beings.

Harlan's first break with his white supremacist counterparts was in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. After ruling against interracial couples (Remember, he was a "pragmatist" from Kentucky near the Civil War time), he found a conscience when it came to African-American's access to businesses. The Civil Rights Act of Act of 1875 was overturned 8-1, Harlan the lone dissenter. The northern white men that traded in justice for being able to do capitalism with their white rabid racist friends in the south, both on the bench, used a fig leaf to rip away rights. They said the 14th Amendment pertained only to state governments, not individuals and how they block others from participating in the economy (here's looking at you Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission). The Ku Klux Court also threw out the argument that the 13th Amendment applied to the case in which Harlan rightfully dissented:

"They are burdens which lay at the very foundation of the institution of slavery as it once existed [exclusion of blacks from businesses]...They are not sustained, except upon the assumption that there is, in this land of universal liberty, a class which may still be discriminated against, even in respect of rights so necessary and supreme that, deprived of their enjoyment in common with others, a freeman is not only branded as on inferior and infected, but, in the competitions of life, is robbed of some of the most essential means of existence."

In which many know and see today, politicos from both parties engage in double standards that would make a Batman villain blush. This was also true in 1883 and Harlan pointed it out when he focused the court to the fact that the Supreme Court once approved the use of municipal bonds to assist wealthy railroad companies under Congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce but now said they could not protect a man's right to get a beer at the local saloon because his pigment scared a man without pigment. Eighty-one years later, this argument would be used again in victory for civil rights.

As we enter the second and more severe Gilded Age, we see factories replaced with call centers and degrading service industries, we see Rockefeller and Carnegie replaced with Bezos and Musk, but we see the inequality and fire sale of our government done out in the open at an even higher level. Shit, Rockefeller, if his poor soul was alive, would probably take the side of anti-trust lawyers at this point. Just for mercy perhaps. Harlan saw the consequences of the first Gilded Age coming and the same spirit in his dissent at this time can ring loud today.

First, his cheap souled colleagues argued in United States v. E.C. Knight Co. that manufacturing monopolies were not in fact unhealthy for a competitive capitalism that we hear more than a dead horse. Weird that these fat-faced plutocrats "forgot" the innovation of vertical integration (here's looking at you Google and Microsoft) when it came to the same people they slobbered on cigars with. As is the theme of the book, Harlan dissented:

"The Constitution, which enumerates the powers committed to the nation for objects of interest to the people of all the states, should not therefore be subjected to an interpretation so rigid, technical, and narrow that those objects cannot be accomplished...

...A general restraint of trade has often resulted from combinations formed for the purpose of controlling prices by destroying the opportunity of buyers and sellers to deal with each other upon the basis of fair, open, free competition [here's looking at you Amazon]...Combinations of this character have frequently been subject of judiciary scrutiny, and have always been condemned as illegal because of their necessary tendency to restrain trade."

Then Harlan gets a little more sassy in which could be argued today against behemoth conglomerate companies:

"It is said that there are no proofs in the record which indicate an intention upon the part of the American Sugar Refining Company and its associates to put a restraint upon trade or commerce...Was it necessary that formal proof be made that the persons engaged in this combination admitted in words that they intended to restrain trade or commerce? Men who form and control these combinations are too cautious and wary to make such admissions orally or in writing."

Guess Harlan didn't foresee 2021. They're pretty brazen about their shit now.

During the same period of American history, the income tax was bandied about to expected scorn from those that monopolized profits and socialized costs. The progressive movement was in its nascent stage and William Jennings Bryan just got to the national scene. On a side note, I did learn for the first time that George Washington proposed a wealth tax and Hamilton personally defended it in the nation's capital. That goes against everything I learned and assumed by the landed gentry slave owners that broke away from Britain to accumulate more wealth. Also punctures a hole in the hackneyed arguments I hear from those with fewer working cells in their prefrontal cortex.

Again, the elite class of scum suckers fought tooth and nail against paying anything that would lessen their hoarding of money by even a cent. In smoky backrooms across major cities of the nation the conspiracy to smother the idea of a permanent income tax was at work. The gargoyles on the Supreme Court graciously gave the monied class ample time and sway in defeating the income tax. They, instead of paying a 2% income tax, wanted taxes to fall mainly on the peasantry below and that Congress did not have the purview to pass such a law. Accusations of socialism, assault on American values (I guess except George Washington's and Alexander Hamilton's), destruction of property through taxation, and the mob of poor ruining everything was thrown out into the public discourse (sound familiar?). Again, Harlan dissented:

"It [argument that Congress cannot pass an income tax bill] strikes at the very foundations of national authority, in that it denies to the general government a power which is or may become vital to the very existence and preservation of the union in a national emergency, such as that of war with a great commercial nation, during which the collection of all duties upon imports will cease or be materially diminished. It tends to reestablish that condition of helplessness in which Congress found itself during the Articles of Confederation."

He continues with pizzazz:

"Let me illustrate this...In the large cities of financial centers of the country, there are persons deriving enormous incomes from the renting of houses that have been erected, not to be occupied by the owner, but for the sole purpose of being rented. Nearby are other persons, trusts, combinations, and corporations, possessing vast quantities of personal property, including bonds and stocks of railroad, telegraph, mining, telephone, banking, coal, oil, gas, and sugar-refining corporations, from which millions upon millions of income are regularly derived. In the same neighborhood are others who own neither real estate, nor invested property, nor bonds, nor stocks of any kind, and whose entire income arises from the skill and industry displayed by them in particular callings, trades, or professions; from the labor of their hands, or use of their brains.

And it is now the law, as this day declared, that...Congress cannot tax the personal property of the country, nor the income arising either from real estate of from invested personal property...while it may compel the merchant, the artisan, the workman, the artist, the author, the lawyer, the physician, even the minister of the Gospel, no one of whom happens to own real estate, invested personal property, stocks, or bonds to contribute directly from their respective earnings."

And with that, he laid bare the still current class warfare tactic of the privileged rich cutting and running while leaving the mass majority of the country holding the bill. And what did the media of yesterday, just like today focus on? The way in which he dissented being so darn disrespectful.

In Plessy v. Ferguson a wealthier class of Creoles that were now delegated to the underclass with African-Americans didn't so much like the treatment they were now receiving as white Americans across the political spectrum abandoned the ideals of Reconstruction. Frederick Douglass wouldn't even show support for this case as he knew that one, was an intersection of class and race in which he knew race would be abandoned for class and two, white supremacy was at such a fever pitch, that any precedent set would hurt more than help. And that is what ended up happening.

The case was a challenge to the Separate Car Act passed by the newly minted racist Louisiana state government. While the advocacy group funded by wealthy creoles focused on segregation, they like Frederick Douglass predicted, ignored the travesties of lynching and Klan violence. And as predicted, a Supreme Court that sold their soul to the devil long before this case ruled against it. Their argument, just because they needed one, rested on the constitutionality of Louisiana's state police power to keep residents safe because mixing pigments is as explosive as juggling dynamite. And because white people were nice enough to even give blacks a rail car to ride in. Of course, Harlan dissented:

"Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens...

The sure guarantee of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war under the pressure of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible and to keep alive a conflict of races the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned."

While Harlan's contemporaries saw it fit to go easy on their whites of the South that were once driven to traitorous behavior because of their love to enslave others, he would not budge:

"Justice promotes peace; the legal recognition of prejudice and injustice can only perpetuate those ills."

"...in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens. In respect of civil rights, the humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved."

Plessy v. Ferguson held on for 80 years and Frederick Douglass' fears came to pass.

Harlan took on opinions for dissent that still are to be remedied today. As America realized its dream to become an imperial nation, the ideals of the Constitution should be enjoyed anywhere an American flag flew took a back seat of a hooptie going over a cliff near Kilauea. The U.S. decided to start this quest by fighting up the ladder of imperial powers beginning with Spain. In a start to a long historic pattern, the U.S. trumped up a tragedy to produce war. After liberating Spain's colonies, we made them our own within minutes. Now the question is whether outside the actual states of the union, does the ideals we hold so dearly in the Constitution can apply to other, darker, people? Of course the court of yesteryear did not think so. These were the Insular Cases in which the U.S. decided that non-Anglo-Saxons were incapable of handling their own governing and deserving rights. But again, Harlan dissented:

"Although the states are constituent parts of the United States, the government rests upon the authority of the people, and not on that of the states."

"The wise men who framed the Constitution and the patriotic people who adopted it were unwilling to depend for their safety upon what, in the opinion referred to, is described as certain principles of natural justice inherent in Anglo-Saxon character which need no expression in constitutions or statutes. They proceeded upon the theory-the wisdom of which experience has vindicated-that the only safe guarantee against government oppression was to withhold or restrict the power to oppress. They well remembered that Anglo-Saxons across the ocean had attempted, in defiance of law and justice, to trample upon the rights of Anglo-Saxons on this continent."

"Whether a particular race will or will not assimilate with our people, and whether they can or cannot with safety to our institutions be brought within the operation of the Constitution, is a matter to be thought of when it is proposed to acquire their territory by treaty...A mistake in the acquisition of territory...cannot be made the grounds for violating the Constitution is not to be obeyed or disobeyed as the circumstances of a particular crisis in our history may suggest the one or the other course to be pursued. The People have decreed that it shall (Scalia not a fan of this word) be the supreme law of the land at all times."

This would be his largest dissenting opinion yet to be realized, even though we have a bunch of shitbaggers (like carpetbaggers but those who put someone else's honor in a bag and shit on it) in the Supreme Court claim Harlan's spirit. Not even the great professor of Harvard Law, Barack Obama could measure up to Harlan's legal opinion on treatment of other people on claimed U.S. soil.

To conclude, by geography and privilege, an underwhelming moderate during the greatest crisis our country faced since the revolution became a Supreme Court Justice that raised eyebrows among the African-American and civil rights minded populace. Harlan surprised most when he became the lonely voice for the masses in a time period that saw racial and class oppression ramp up to unprecedented levels until…like now. His dissenting opinions planted the seeds of justice to later bloom long after he became worm food. Many didn’t realize or acknowledge it during his own time and I hope Sotomayor or Kagan are those voices today as things look just as grim if not grimmer.
The grifting shitbaggers of today love to claim the honor of Justice John Marshall Harlan like Gorsuch who repeatedly cites Harlan as a role model and hangs pictures of him to supplement the fact, to Chief Justice John Roberts who admires Justice Harlan so much he moved his picture to the inner sanctum of the most undemocratic body in the world of democracies, to Justice Scalia (Rest In Piss) who claims Harlan was an originalist while he decided directly against issues that Harlan decided opposite.

If you are a fan of judicial history and law, you’ll love this book. If not, you’ll still like it, except for the long slog of the first 250 pages. After that, it is a reminder of what this country could have been then and now.

3.5/5

[Marissa]

"The difference between one and none is the difference between hope and no hope, light and darkness."

To me, being a lawyer sounds like absolute hell. But my dislike isn't driven by the inherent importance of law -- which is it to say: extremely important. It just all sounds awful. So I'm not sure what compelled me to read a biography on a once-little-remembered Supreme Court Justice. And yes, the writing style could be difficult at times -- dry, with lengthy quotes of legalese that my eyes glossed over. This book is definitely aimed at those in the legal profession and not haters like me. I even had to go to a special section of the library to pick it up.

That said, it came to me at a fortuitous time, because of the uncanny parallels we're experiencing in America.

"The decades of the Gilded Age were chronicled as a rolling carnival, with the breathtaking excitement of industrial progress clashing with the grim reality of social regression... millions of American families fulfilled Lincoln's promise of a new birth of freedom after the Civil War... but as the narrative turned, those actions were ruthlessly extinguished, not all at once but through a slow, menacing starvation. The ingredients for success -- education, access to public accommodations, voting rights, and ultimately money -- were gradually withdrawn, each deprivation receiving the legal imprimatur of the United States Supreme Court."

Hmm, a time period of massive technological progress, wealth hoarded amongst the elites happening in parallel with social regression and removal of rights from minorities? Sounds vaguely familiar.

That's why it was fascinating to read about Harlan, specifically his Supreme Court decisions. Harlan became known as "The Great Dissenter" for frequently disagreeing with the rest of the Court on very impactful and regressive cases, to the point that only now is society has finally catching up with him. As someone who is frequently called a contrarian, I was curious to understand what drove him. The book does get into this. It boils down to, likely, his closeness to his Black half-brother, Robert Harlan, his strong religious values, his deep belief in American ideals, but most importantly, his ability to see cases in terms of their impacts, and not just the case themself. This kind of birds-eye view of law, and society, I think could serve us all. It's never just about this specific policy, or this decision, but what will the impacts be 10, 50, 100 years later? What will it allow? What harms will it cause? This, the book postulates, was his driving force. It's not just about whether the plaintiff was right or wrong. It's not even really about the facts of the case. It's about what the decision MEANS. That's why he penned (and, the book says, turned the form of Dissents into an Art) lengthy, detailed dissents -- laying out flaws in the majority decision, how future lawyers can pick holes, and what will come about as a result of the decision. The book also suggests that is why he sometimes joined the majority and wrote the majority decisions: so he could frame it in such a way as to limit the impacts by writing as narrow a view as possible.

I can't do a full deep dive on his cases, but I can give a high-level overview of some of the impactful ones, because you've certainly heard of at least one. Also, the breadth of his Dissents stood out to me. Not only was he staunchly against .. um racism, he also was a champion for labor rights, antitrust laws, and taxing the rich. He was virulently anti-lynching, anti-American-colonialism, fighting for rights of Hawaiian and Puerto Ricans, although sort of oddly anti-Chinese. Basically, he'd never get onto the Court now, but he is now considered one of the greatest Justices in American history. Some of his cases and my not-official interpretations and descriptions below:

* Plessy v. Ferguson: this is probably the most famous, which codified "separate but equal" and which Harlan was the sole dissenter. His scathing dissent was what Thurgood Marshall later called his Bible, and where the first quote in my review is taken from. Hope is a powerful thing.
* Civil Rights Cases of 1883: a group of 5 cases dealing with racial discrimination, particularly around the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which I didn't know existed -- probably because it was rendered useless by these poor decisions). These decisions, in which Harlan continued to be the only dissenter, essentially gutted the promise of Reconstruction, stripping away any protections against racial discrimination. Harlan saw this as a visceral, disgusting decision and warned about the dangers that indeed came to be: an era of segregation, oppression, and violence.
* Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & trust Co: struck down the idea of income tax, Harlan angrily dissented and claimed lack of income tax was the rich asserting privileges over the poor and protecting their own interests.
* United States v. E. C Knight Co (aka the Sugar Trust Case): this limited federal power to pursue antirust actions under the Sherman Antitrust Act, Harlan again the lone dissenter warned that greedy corporations could become so powerful that no government could regulate them; unfortunately prescient, I fear.
* Lochner v. New York: this decision overturned labor laws in New York and set the entire labor rights movement back, depriving people of worker protections. (The book made it clear this case was significant in other ways too, re: judicial overreach, but those implications didn't quite reach me. It sufficed for me to understand it is apparently a hated ruling nowadays.)
* United States v. Wong Kim Ark: This deals with birthright citizenship and will almost certainly be in the news soon, given recent events. Wong Kim Ark was born in America to Chinese citizens, and after he left America for a while and tried to come back, he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and told he was not an American citizen. Although the Supreme Court ruled in Wong's favor, decreeing that he was a citizen, Harlan ... dissented. This one is considered a stain on his record, and, along with his Plessy Dissent which calls out Chinese people for some reason, sort of adds an uncomfortable Sinophobia to his legacy. The book tries to hand wave this away, I will admit.
* Elk v. Wilkins: But do we love a man driven to defend the rights of Native Americans? We do. This case dealt with citizenship and voting rights to a Winnebago man born on a reservation, and the court decreed him a foreign citizen. Harlan's angry dissent seems like his classic thunderous righteousness.
* United States v. Shipp: This is a somewhat winding tale to reach the only criminal trial EVER held by the Supreme Court. A young Black man, Ed Johnson, was wrongfully sentenced to death in Tennessee before Justice Harlan issued a stay of execution. Angered at this decision, a mob lynched Johnson. Outraged, the Supreme Court prosecuted the Sheriff of Chattanooga, Shipp, and eight others on trial for not preventing the lynching.
* Insular Cases: he consistently took an anti-imperialist tone, arguing that anyone in American colonies were, indeed, full American citizens with full rights. This belief continues to be a debate.

This book also introduced me to the competing concepts of "social equality" vs "civil equality." Specifically, Black leaders at the time felt that fighting for "social equality" was a losing battle and ultimately unnecessary. That is, "a large swath of moderate white population appeared receptive to Black appeals for political or economic rights, but drew the line at racial mixing. To Frederick Douglass and Robert Harlan, the assumption that Black people were conspiring to gain access to white clubs was an insult to Black dignity: as long as a man was given voting rights and economic liberties, he could choose his own friends." Douglass, in fact, had an entire strategy around not supporting efforts on things like The Separate Car Act. I hadn't thought of those concepts in opposition before, but I think it remains sadly relevant. Speaking of...

Harlan's early years were fascinating. Born to a slaveholding family, he fought for the Union but was staunchly anti-abolitionist for many years, so watching his progression was fascinating. Specifically, the verve of his forward-thinking metamorphosis struck me, and it's the sort of thing I wish we could bottle and sell. How did he become one of the leading defender of Black rights, capable of seeing the future clearly and be disgusted by it in a way white folks seemed unable or unconcerned to?

"When almost all of white society determined, in the face of bitter disputes over Reconstruction measures, that reconciliation between North and South was more important than enforcing constitutional rights for Black Americans, the Supreme Court was almost entirely complicit in the deal. Harlan was not.... he alone expressed the view that when rights are denied to one group, it endangers the protections of all."

These eerie parallels continue to unnerve me. I understand why Biden campaign on a platform of unity following 4 years of racist, sexist hatred-informed policy but I now revisit this strategy more critically. I think we had a chance, during Reconstruction, to rectify the foundation of our country and we did not, and now we continue to pay for it. I continue to worry about what our toothless response means.

That said, the book ends on a thankfully uplifting note. It would have to, I think.

After his death, Harlan's dissents have been mostly vindicated. Ruling after ruling was overturned, citing his language, expanding protections, enshrining civil rights. To be clear, it was a lot of work and many, many people were hurt in the meantime, but it is possible for society to catch up to him. One Supreme Court decision, nay even five or seventeen, is forever. Society is what we shape it to be. These setbacks hurt, but progress marches somewhat on... (it is notable some of his views are still not majority opinion or validated by the courts yet).

History may not be made by dissenters, but the future can be.

And so, as we "look ahead to a worrisome, unknowable future," I think we can take some comfort in words that gave hope to people in much, much worse circumstances than we are in now. In his Plessy Dissent, Harlan wrote: "Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful." This was a subversive idea then, and remains one now, so don't let them forget it.

[Tracie Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
(Available as Print: ©6/8/2021; PAGES: 624; Unabridged.)
(Available as Digital: Yes)
*This version: Audio : ©6/8/2021; (ISBN 9781797124896) DURATION: 19:23:00; Unabridged
Other media: I don’t think so—not yet at least.

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
The well told primary story here is John Marshall Harlan’s, but there are multiple substories that are also very interesting and important.
Justice Harlan is well known in the legal community for such lone dissents as Plessy vs. Ferguson, but while many of us know something of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a fellow Justice; not as many know much of Justice Harlan. This book quite admirably seeks to rectify that.
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2021 award winner, though lengthy; this book is well worth reading.

AUTHOR:
Peter S. Canellos. From the author’s website, peterscanellos.com, “Peter S. Canellos is the author of The Great Dissenter: The story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero, the profound tale of how a former slave owner – with the help of a once-enslaved man who grew up alongside him and was believed to be his half-brother – changed American law. A current editor at POLITICO, former editorial page editor of The Boston Globe, and editor of the New York Times bestseller Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, Peter has harbored an interest in Harlan since his days at Columbia Law School three decades ago.
The Great Dissenter captures a huge swath of history, from aristocratic pre-Civil War Kentucky, to Cincinnati at the height of the Underground Railroad, to the famed horse-racing grounds of Europe, to the velvet chambers of the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. It gives readers a front-row seat for some of the greatest legal battles of all time – as Americans fight for civil rights and economic justice in the Gilded Age. And it shows how one man’s willingness to stand up to his colleagues reverberated for a century until his dissenting views – not those of the court’s majority – became the law of the land.”

NARRATOR:
Arthur Morey. According to arthurmoreyvoice.com, “Arthur Morey is a Golden Voice narrator. He grew up in Oregon, attended Harvard College and the University of Chicago. He has written and ghostwritten scripts, lyrics, and fiction. Several of his plays were produced in New York and Chicago. He toured northern Italy with the Piccolo Teatro di Milano as a singer-songwriter.
He was literary manager at Chicago’s Body Politic Theatre and taught writing, English and Comp Lit at Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago. At N.U Press he edited and revised Viola Spolin’s seminal books on improvisational theatre before working as a narrator he was managing editor of Renaissance Books in Los Angeles.
He has won over 25 AudioFile earphones awards and has worked on nine titles that were nominated for Audies.”
According to English-voice-over.fandom.com, other works that Arthur has done are:

“Audio Drama
Ender's Game: Alive (2013) - Dr. Lineberry, John Paul Wiggin
Audiobooks
A Headache in the Pelvis (2018) - Narration
Don't Know Much About the American Presidents (2012) - Narration
Ellison Wonderland (2015) - Narration
Fault Lines in the Constitution (2017) - Narration
First Sight (2013) - Narration
Good Trouble (2018) - Narration
Guardian Angels & Other Monsters (2018) - Narration
Legacy (2010) - Narration
Magic for Beginners (2014) - Narration
Mouthful of Birds (2019) - Narration
My Morning Routine (2018) - Narration
On Heaven and Earth (2013) - Narration
Our Father (2018) - Narration
Secret Ingredients (2007) - Narration
The Book of Swords (2017) - Narration
The Divorce Papers (2014) - Narration
The Hidden History of America at War (2015) - Narration
The Inquisitor's Tale (2016) - Narration
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover (2018) - Narration
The Tale of Tales (2016) - Narration
The Whore's Child (2011) - Narration
Vampires in the Lemon Grove (2013) - Narration
West of Eden (2016) - Narration
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2012) - Narration
Your Own, Sylvia (2009) – Narration”

Initially, I was slightly troubled by inexact annunciation and diagnosed dental repairs that were interfering, but in a very short time it was the great intonations and overall good delivery that had my attention and only a very few times throughout the rest of the narration did I struggle with trying to work out what word had been said.

GENRE:
Non-Fiction; Biography; History

SUBJECTS:
Supreme Court; Justices; Civil Rights; Abolition; Dissenting Opinions; historical figures; civil war; slavery; law; United States

DEDICATION:
“For my mother and father”

SAMPLE QUOTATION: From Chapter One: “A Father’s Prophecy”
“John Marshall Harlan was born on the precipice; on the very hinge of a society splitting in half.
To the north of his hometown of Danville, Kentucky, an abolitionist wind was blowing after shocking reports of dozens of men, women, and children hacked and bludgeoned to death in the infamous Nat Turner slave rebellion less than two summers before Harlan’s birth on June 1, 1833.1 To the south, feelings were hardening in the opposite direction. Overseers wielded whips and chains to keep enslaved men and women in line, while statesmen moved to preserve and expand their states’ legal rights to handle their property in any way they deemed fit.
In Kentucky, all these views were stirring uneasily, making the state a crucible of the nation’s growing divide over slavery. All sides had stakes in Kentucky. It had large plantations surrounded by log slave cabins, but also many smaller farms with just and handful of enslaved men and women living in close contact with their masters. It had farms with no slaves, just hardworking families, and also, at the bottom of its social strata, a growing population of free Black laborers.2
Kentucky’s most admired political leader, Henry Clay, was silky of dress and smooth of voice. He was a wealthy slave owner who nonetheless supported clear limits on an institution he disliked but never disavowed.3 Clays views fit his state, if not his country. Ever since Kentucky had broken off from its aristocratic parent, Virginia, four decades earlier, the new state had cultivated it’s own distinct sense of pride and gentry, with original families like the Clays and the Harlans building nirvana in the bluegrass that they called “the Athens of the West.”4 A dispute over slavery wouldn’t just put Kentucky at odds with it neighbors but also with itself, casting its economic and social differences in a sharp and deadly relief. A national furor over slavery was poison to Kentucky’s marrow. That’s why Henry Clay dedicated his formidable political talent—the best of his generation, everyone agreed—to forging the compromises necessary to tamp down tensions within the state and across the nation.”

RATING:
5 stars. Well written and narrated.

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
1/25/2022 – 2/24/2022

[Billhotto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Born in Kentucky in 1833 and from a slave holding family, Harlan was the lone Supreme Court justice to dissent against the Court's decisions to undo the Civil Right laws and approve separate but equal in "Plessy v Ferguson". He also dissented to the corporate takeover of the economy in cases such as "Lochner v New York". He was the odd man out while on the court but was vindicated in the twentieth century. His dissents were used by in reversing Lochner in the 1930's and Plessey in 1954.
Why did Harlan take such unpopular opinions. He was named after John Marshall and like him Harlan revered the Union and the Constitution. He refused to go along with the program of undoing the results of the Civil War and a laissez- faire economics. This thinking to unite the country by demeaning the lives of Black people and building the economy on the backs of workers and consumers.
Before the Civil War Harlan had opposed both Abolitionists and southern Fire-eaters. He was a Whig who supported the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 election. He fought for the Union in the war but did not join the Republican party until 1868. However, he accepted that the war and the 14th Amendment intended to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. He was consistent unlike his fellow justices who trimmed their decisions to achieve the desired outcome.
Harlan had a personal reason to believe that Black Americans would, given the opportunity, would achieve the same as White. His older half-brother Robert Harlan's mother was a slave. Raised in the Harlan family, eventually freed, Robert sold supplies to 49ers, raised and raced horses in Kentucky and England and was a shopkeeper. He became a leader of the Black community in Cincinnati and nationally. He helped John join the Republican party. This is almost a dual biography of the two Harlans. Unfortunately, prejudice ad discrimination blocked Robert's career. But his life is redeemed by his influence on his brother, John Marshall.

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harlan is a fascinating figure , a great Jurist and a great American, this book however is not great. The author dwells too much on his potential half brother (Robert Harlan may share a father with John, he was purchased by John’s father at a young age and raised well). Who cares that Robert is in Paris trying to track down a stolen racehorse, it’s not relevant to the underlying story.

Author also has a lot of biases that are plain and evident, not a fan of Zach Taylor but massive Henry Clay fan for instance.

Author makes a great deal of Pearl Clutching on how Pollock v Farmer’s Loan and Trust changed precedent, but then of course is happy that other precedents were defeated.

Ultimately author does not subscribe to a color blind society as Harlan strived for.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite biographies that I’ve read! Tied together the long arc of mid-19th century to early 20th century thinking. I appreciated a history about the court and the way life before, during, and after the civil war helped shaped Harlan’s decisions.

I feel connected to his arc from small town man with limited scope to a man who learned to grow beyond his faults and stand up for what was right.

I also felt like it was an engaging way to introduce me to different cases decided by the Supreme Court and give me a deeper perspective of the courts history as we sit in this new, concerning moment in Supreme Court history.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brick of a book is a portrait of a great but little known Kentuckian and a lesson in the importance of diversity of experience. Harlan grew up with Black people that he knew, liked, and respected -- including his half-brother Robert Harlan -- enabling his work on the United States Supreme Court to move past racist stereotypes. His dissents over the decades eventually became the law of the land."

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book on a historical figure I wasn’t well aware of. Supreme Justice Harlen, who dissented in several cases in which civil rights and anti corruption laws were overturned including Plessy vs. Ferguson.

[Megan Cashen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just me getting emotional about Supreme Court cases.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

very interesting and thoroughly researched, but i think we can admire Harlan’s legacy while also actually reckoning with his faults (still overall recommend if you are interested in the judiciary)

[Michael Nichols]

A most interesting read about how the Supreme Court makes errors and sometimes corrects them.