Download or read book A History of the Fifth Circuit 1891 1981 written by Harvey C. Couch and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Campaign of Quiet Persuasion written by Jan Bates Wheeler and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1960, the College Entrance Examination Board became an unexpected participant in the movement to desegregate education in the South. Working with its partner, Educational Testing Services, the College Board quietly integrated its Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) centers throughout the Deep South. Traveling from state to state, taking one school district and even one school at a time, two College Board staff members, both native southerners, waged "a campaign of quiet persuasion" and succeeded, establishing a roster of desegregated test centers within segregated school districts while the historic battle for civil rights raged around them. In the context of the larger struggle for equal opportunities for southern black students, their work addressed a small but critical barrier to higher education. Shedding light on this remarkable story for the first time, Jan Bates Wheeler tells how the College Board staff members -- Ben Cameron and Ben Gibson -- succeeded. Their candid and thoughtfully written records of conversations and confrontations, untouched for nearly fifty years, reveal the persistence required to reach a goal many thought unachievable and even foolhardy. Indeed, their task placed them in the unusual position of advocating for school desegregation on a day-to-day basis as part of their jobs. This positioned Cameron and Gibson squarely in opposition to prevailing laws, customs, and attitudes -- an ill-advised stance for any nascent business venture, particularly one experiencing competition from a new, rival testing organization purported to accommodate openly those same laws, customs, and attitudes. Cameron and Gibson also accepted the personal danger involved in confrontations with racist school officials. The officials who cooperated with the pair assumed even greater risk, and in order to minimize that threat, Cameron and Gibson pledged not to publicize their efforts. Even years after their work had ended, the two men refused to write about their campaign for fear of compromising the people who had helped them. Their concerns, according to Wheeler, kept this remarkable story largely untold until now.

Download or read book The Judicial Branch of Federal Government written by Charles L. Zelden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-07-12 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in ABC-CLIO's About Federal Government set looks at the history and daily operations of the federal judiciary, from district courts, to courts of appeal, to the Supreme Court. The Judicial Branch of Federal Government: People, Process, and Politics shows how the federal courts act as interpreters of the law, definers of rules, and shapers of policy, covering the judiciary throughout U.S. history and as it functions today. In one concise yet comprehensive resource, The Judicial Branch of Federal Government describes the constitutionally ascribed roles and structures of the courts. It looks at the men and women who serve on the federal bench (who they are and how they are appointed), as well as the fascinating relationship of the federal courts with the legislative and executive branches and with the 50 state court systems.

Download or read book Debates on the Federal Judiciary A Documentary History Volume III 1939 2005 written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Count Them One by One written by Gordon A. Martin and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-01-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when, in 1961, the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd. While thirty percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South, and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys. Gordon A. Martin, Jr., then a newly-minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government's sixteen black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial. Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi and interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Martin intertwines these current reflections with commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

Download or read book The Nominee written by Leslie H. Southwick and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President George W. Bush nominated Leslie H. Southwick in 2007 to the federal appeals court, Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans. Initially, Southwick seemed a consensus nominee. Just days before his hearing, though, a progressive advocacy group distributed the results of research it had conducted on opinions of the state court on which he had served for twelve years. Two opinions Southwick had signed off on but not written became the center of the debate over the next five months. One dealt with a racial slur by a state worker, the other with a child custody battle between a father and a bisexual mother. Apparent bipartisan agreement for a quick confirmation turned into a long set of battles in the Judiciary Committee, on the floor of the Senate, and in the media. In early August, Senator Dianne Feinstein completely surprised her committee colleagues by supporting Southwick. Hers was the one Democratic vote needed to move the nomination to the full Senate. Then in late October, by a two-vote margin, he received the votes needed to end a filibuster. Confirmation followed. Southwick recounts the four years he spent at the Department of Justice, the twelve years on a state court, and his military service in Iraq while deployed with a Mississippi National Guard Brigade. During the nomination inferno Southwick maintained a diary of the many events, the conversations and emails, the joys and despairs, and quite often, the prayers and sense of peace his faith gave him--his memoir bears significant spiritual content. Throughout the struggle, Southwick learned that perspective and growth are important to all of us when making decisions, and he grew to accept his critics, regardless of outcome. In The Nominee there is no rancor, and instead the book expresses the understanding that the difficult road to success was the most helpful one for him, both as a man and as a judge.

Download or read book Champion of Civil Rights written by Joel William Friedman and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the least publicly recognized heroes of the civil rights movement in the United States, John Minor Wisdom served as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1957 until his death in 1999 and wrote many of the landmark decisions instrumental in desegregating the American South. In this revealing biography, law professor Joel William Friedman explores Judge Wisdom's substantial legal contributions and political work at a critical time in the history of the South. In 1957, President Eisenhower appointed Wisdom to the Fifth Circuit, which included some of the most deeply segregated southern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. In the tumultuous two decades following its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court issued only a few civil rights decisions, preferring instead to affirm Fifth Circuit Court opinions or let them stand without hearing an appeal. Judge Wisdom, therefore, authored many of the decisions that transformed the South and broke down barriers of all kinds for African Americans, including the desegregation of public schools. In preparing this first full-length biography of Judge Wisdom, Friedman had unrestricted access to Wisdom's voluminous repository of personal and professional papers. In addition, he draws on personal interviews with law clerks who served under Judge Wisdom, resulting in a unique, behind-the-scenes account of some of the nation's most important legal decisions: the admission of the first black student to the University of Mississippi, the initiation of contempt proceedings against Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, and the destruction of obstacles that had previously kept black Americans from voting. Friedman also explores Wisdom's political life prior to joining the federal bench, including his pivotal role in resurrecting the Louisiana Republican Party and in securing the Republican presidential nomination for Eisenhower. A compelling account of how a child of privilege from one of America's most socially and racially stratified cities came to serve as the driving force behind the legal effort to end segregation, Champion of Civil Rights offers judicial biography at its best.

Download or read book The Search for Justice written by Peter Charles and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The civil rights era was a time of pervasive change in American political and social life. Among the decisive forces driving change were lawyers, who wielded the power of law to resolve competing concepts of order and equality and, in the end, to hold out the promise of a new and better nation. The Search for Justice is a look the role of the lawyers throughout the period, focusing on one of the central issues of the time: school segregation. The most notable participants to address this issue were the public interest lawyers of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, whose counselors brought lawsuits and carried out appeals in state and federal courts over the course of twenty years. But also playing a part in the story were members of the bar who defended Jim Crow laws explicitly or implicitly and, in some cases, also served in state or federal government; lawyers who sat on state and federal benches and heard civil rights cases; and, finally, law professors who analyzed the reasoning of the courts in classrooms and public forums removed from the fray. With rich, copiously researched detail, Hoffer takes readers through the interactions of these groups, setting their activities not only in the context of the civil rights movement but also of their full political and legal legacies, including the growth of corporate private legal practice after World War II and the expansion of the role of law professors in public discourse, particularly with the New Deal. Seeing the civil rights era through the lens of law enables us to understand for the first time the many ways in which lawyers affected the course and outcome of the movement.

Download or read book The Law s Conscience written by Peter Charles Hoffer and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Law's Conscience is a history of equity in Anglo-American juris-prudence from the inception of the chancellor's court in medieval England to the recent civil rights and affirmative action decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Peter Hoffer argues that equity embodies a way of looking at law, including constitutions, based on ideas of mutual fairness, public trusteeship, and equal protection. His central theme is the tension between the ideal of equity and the actual availability of equitable remedies. Hoffer examines this tension in the trusteeship constitutionalism of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson; the incorporation of equity in the first American constitutions; the antebellum controversy over slavery; the fortunes of the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War; the emergence of the doctrine of "Balance of Equity" in twentieth-century public-interest law; and the desegregation and reverse discrimination cases of the past thirty-five years. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was the most important equity suit in American history, and Hoffer begins and ends his book with a new interpretation of its lessons.

Download or read book The Rise of Judicial Management in the U S District Court Southern District of Texas 1955 2000 written by Steven Harmon Wilson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length study of a federal district court to analyze the revolutionary changes in its mission, structure, policies, and procedures over the past four decades. As Steven Harmon Wilson chronicles the court's attempts to keep pace with an expanding, diversifying caseload, he situates those efforts within the social, cultural, and political expectations that have prompted the increase in judicial seats from four in 1955 to the current nineteen. Federal judges have progressed from being simply referees of legal disputes to managers of expanding courts, dockets, and staffs, says Wilson. The Southern District of Texas offers an especially instructive model by which to study this transformation. Not only does it contain a varied population of Hispanics, African Americans, and whites, but its jurisdiction includes an international border and some of the busiest seaports in the United States. Wilson identifies three areas of judicial management in which the shift has most clearly manifested itself. Through docket and case management judges have attempted to rationalize the flow of work through the litigation process. Lastly, and most controversially, judges have sought to bring "constitutionally flawed" institutions into compliance through "structural reform" rulings in areas such as housing, education, employment, and voting. Wilson draws on sources ranging from judicial biography and oral-history interviews to case files, published opinions, and administrative memoranda. Blending legal history with social science, this important new study ponders the changing meaning of federal judgeship as it shows how judicial management has both helped and hindered the resolution of legal conflicts and the protection of civil rights.

Download or read book All Rise written by Louise Ann Fisch and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an emerging power broker in the predominantly Anglo establishment, Garza personified the new elite in the Mexican American community and in the Democratic Party.

Download or read book Fifty Years of Justice written by James M. Denham and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The verdicts have made headlines, but little is known about the inner workings of the court in which they were delivered. In Fifty Years of Justice, James Denham presents the fascinating history of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida from its founding in 1962 to the present. Readers will discover the intricacies of rulings, the criminal defendants and civil litigants, and the dedicated officials—the unsung heroes—who keep the justice system running day to day. From desegregation to discrimination, espionage to the environment, trafficking to terrorism, and a host of cases in between, litigation in these courtrooms has shaped and shaken both state and nation.

Download or read book Congress s Constitution written by Josh Chafetz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scholar of Congress and the Constitution analyzes Congress’s surprisingly potent set of tools in the system of checks and balances. Congress is widely supposed to be the least effective branch of the federal government. But as Josh Chafetz shows in this boldly original analysis, Congress in fact has numerous powerful tools at its disposal in its conflicts with the other branches. These tools include the power of the purse, the contempt power, freedom of speech and debate, and more. Drawing extensively on the historical development of Anglo-American legislatures from the seventeenth century to the present, Chafetz concludes that these tools are all means by which Congress and its members battle for public support. When Congress uses them to engage successfully with the public, it increases its power vis-à-vis the other branches; when it does not, it loses power. This groundbreaking take on the separation of powers will be of interest to both legal scholars and political scientists.

Download or read book Women s Rights and the Bible written by Richard H. Hiers and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Richard Hiers challenges the popular assumption that the Bible has a low view of women and that biblical law either ignores women or requires them to be subject and subservient to men. He does so by identifying and carefully examining hundreds of biblical texts and allowing them to speak for themselves. Among the findings: - that biblical tradition generally represents women positively, as strong and independent persons; - that no text represents wives as subject to their husbands and that no biblical law requires such subjection; - that biblical laws provide many protections for women's rights and interests--in several instances, rights equal to those enjoyed by men. The book focuses particularly on the Old Testament and Old Testament law, and argues that Old Testament laws and their underlying values provide important resources for Christian ethics and social policy today.

Download or read book Story Behind the Stone The written by Robert Jeanfreau and published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-03-14 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of New Orleans' monuments. From the statue of Joan of Arc that stands in the French Quarter to the Bienville Monument and the bust of General Lafayette, this guide provides a historical look at more than forty of the city's landmarks. Some remain ensconced in gardens or private collections while others exist in public view. Descriptions accompany each image, providing the legend behind each landmark and a deeper knowledge of New Orleans' rich past.

Download or read book A Lie Will Suffice written by Jay Wilkinson and published by Fulton Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1893 Western Sicily, Gaetano DiGiovanni, twenty-five years old, foresees a day when he abandons his turbulent, hard-scrabble life in the Palermo Province hinterlands for the promise of America. His fourteen-and-a-half-year-old wife, Angelina Bucaro DiGiovanni, is at his side. Gaetano becomes an old-style Mafiosi "man of respect," called Don Tano Baiocco in Sicily and New Orleans. For the next half century, "Tano Baiocco" guides his burgeoning family through Atlantic Ocean crossings, murder, extortion, vendetta, bootlegging, hostage-taking Fascists cracking down on Sicilian Mafiosi, labor influence on the New Orleans banana docks, two criminal trials, a secret interment in the family burial vault, the Great Depression and World War II. Employing a culture-based nineteenth-century Sicilian mindset, including omerta and deception, Gaetano "Baiocco" DiGiovanni, his wife, children, and son-in-law, Natale Guinta, largely conceal the dark aspects of the family history from their offspring and following generations, who by the early twenty-first century have established themselves as pillars of their American communities. Then one day in 2009, one of Gaetano's many upright American granddaughters, distraught over her discovery of the truth about the 1921 Mafia assassination of Gaetano's oldest son, her Uncle Domenico, presents a few old newspaper articles to her own stunned son, the author of this book. She obliquely challenges him to dig out the whole truth of the family history. "One day, you're gonna write a book about my family," she says, "and it won't be so pretty. Why all the secrets? Why all the lies?" A Lie Will Suffice is the result of twelve years of research, cited in detailed endnotes and an extensive bibliography, that attempts to answer a mother's questions, to unravel and explain the sometimes difficult-to-discern, complex, but ultimately triumphant DiGiovanni-Guinta family history. It ends with the opaque revelation to the author by his Godfather, ten months before his Godfather's death, of the most closely held family secret.

Download or read book The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law written by Roger K. Newman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to gather in a single volume concise biographies of the most eminent men and women in the history of American law. Encompassing a wide range of individuals who have devised, replenished, expounded, and explained law, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law presents succinct and lively entries devoted to more than 700 subjects selected for their significant and lasting influence on American law. Casting a wide net, editor Roger K. Newman includes individuals from around the country, from colonial times to the present, encompassing the spectrum of ideologies from left-wing to right, and including a diversity of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Entries are devoted to the living and dead, the famous and infamous, many who upheld the law and some who broke it. Supreme Court justices, private practice lawyers, presidents, professors, journalists, philosophers, novelists, prosecutors, and others--the individuals in the volume are as diverse as the nation itself. Entries written by close to 600 expert contributors outline basic biographical facts on their subjects, offer well-chosen anecdotes and incidents to reveal accomplishments, and include brief bibliographies. Readers will turn to this dictionary as an authoritative and useful resource, but they will also discover a volume that delights and entertains. Listed in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law: John Ashcroft Robert H. Bork Bill Clinton Ruth Bader Ginsburg Patrick Henry J. Edgar Hoover James Madison Thurgood Marshall Sandra Day O'Connor Janet Reno Franklin D. Roosevelt Julius and Ethel Rosenberg John T. Scopes O. J. Simpson Alexis de Tocqueville Scott Turow And more than 700 others