Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race
How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown
McMahon shows how FDR's attempt to strengthen the presidency and undermine the power of conservative Southern Democrats dovetailed with his efforts to seek racial equality through the federal courts. By appointing a majority of rights-based liberals deferential to presidential power, Roosevelt ensured that the Supreme Court would be receptive to civil rights claims, especially when those claims had the support of the executive branch.
APSA Presidency Research Section: APSA-Richard E. Neustadt Award
Won
Winner of the 2005 Richard E. Neustadt Book Award for the best book on the Presidency
"[McMahon] argues that Roosevelt worked to advance the civil rights cause through the two institutional means he had at his disposal in the face of entrenched segregationist power in Congress. These were the presidency itself, which FDR consistently sought to strengthen at Congress's expense, and his executive ability to nominate judges to the federal bench. McMahon's treatment of both is skillful, as he adds innovative use of evidence to theoretical tools developed in political science."—Gerard Alexander, Virginia Quarterly Review
"[McMahon] presents a wealth of information demonstrating that Roosevelt's record of judicial and executive appointments as well as his policy initiatives were instrumental in creating the political climate from which the Brown decision emerged."
1. Introduction: The Day They Drove Old Dixie Down
2. The Incongruities of Reform: Rights-Centered Liberalism and Legal Realism in the Early New Deal Years
3. FDR's Constitutional Vision and the Defeat of the Court-Packing Plan: The Modern Presidency and the Enemies of Institutional Reform
4. "Approving Legislation for the People, Preserving Liberties—Almost Rewriting Laws": The Politics of Creating the Roosevelt Court
5. A Constitutional Purge: Southern Democracy, Lynch Law, and the Roosevelt Justice Department
6. The Commitment Continues: Truman, Eisenhower, and the Civil Rights Decisions
7. Conclusion: The Road the Court Trod
Notes
Works Cited
Index
History: American History
Law and Legal Studies: Legal History
Political Science: American Government and Politics | Judicial Politics
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