Previous Chairs

The Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Kluge Center has supported scholars from a wide range of academic backgrounds. The following materials and presentations will guide you in getting to know their scholarly work.

Seth Masket is professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. He teaches and researches on political parties, state legislatures, and campaigns and elections.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center he gathered historical evidence of national parties’ reactions to losing campaigns.

Featured Videos

May 21, 2018

The U.S. has a growing number of citizens who do not identify with either of the parties that comprise our two-party political system. This panel discussion explored the potential impacts that this phenomenon will have on the future of political parties and American politics in general. The event was co-hosted by the University of Denver.

September 28, 2018

A distinguished panel of scholars, including former Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance Seth Masket and former chair in Modern Culture Henry Jenkins discuss how American politics and culture relate to themes within the Star Wars universe.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and how They Weaken Democracy by Seth E. Masket
Call Number: JK2261 .M355 2016
ISBN: 9780190220839
Published/Created: 2016-04-29
The Inevitable Party is a study of anti-party reforms and why they fail. Numerous reform movements over the past century have designated parties as the enemy of democracy, and they have found a willing ally in the American people in their efforts to rein in and occasionally root out parties. Masket investigates several of these anti-party reform efforts - from open primaries to campaign finance restrictions to nonpartisan legislatures - using legislative roll call votes, campaign donations patterns, and extensive interviews with local political elites. These cases demonstrate parties adapting to, and sometimes thriving amidst, reforms designed to weaken or destroy them.The reason for these reforms' failures, the book argues, is that they proceed from an incorrect conception of just what a party is. Parties are not rigid structures that can be wished or legislated away; they are networks of creative and adaptive policy demanders who use their influence to determine just what sorts of people get nominated for office. Even while these reforms tend to fail, however, they impose considerable costs on society, usually reducing transparency and accountability in politics and government.
No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures by Seth E. Masket; Seth Masket
Call Number: JK2295.C3 M37 2009
ISBN: 9780472116898
Published/Created: 2009-04-21
Despite concerns about the debilitating effects of partisanship on democratic government, in recent years political parties have gained strength in state governments as well as in Washington. Whereas political machines of the past manipulated votes, today's machines determine which candidates can credibly compete in a primary. Focusing on the history and politics of California, Seth E. Masket reveals how these machines evolved and how they stay in power by directing money, endorsements, and expertise to favored candidates, who often tend toward the ideological extreme. Masket argues that politicians are not inherently partisan. Instead, partisanship is thrust upon them by actors outside the government with the power to manipulate primary elections.

T.H. Breen is William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University and is a distinguished Early American historian interested in the history of political thought, material culture, and cultural anthropology.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Breen worked on a project titled, “Enforcing the American Revolution: Law and Disorder During the War for Independence.”

Featured Video

April 20, 2017

This lecture challenged our traditional assumptions about the chronology of the American Revolution. T.H. Breen rejected a familiar story that begins in the early 1760s with the coronation of George III and then traces a slow buildup of grievances until the colonists declare independence and set the country on the road to the Constitution. This talk introduced a radically different timeline that reinterprets the beginning and end of the Revolution and, in the process, restores the ordinary American people to the events that shaped the nation.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

The Will of the People by T. H. Breen
Call Number: E209 .B775 2019
ISBN: 9780674971790
Published/Created: 2019-09-17
T. H. Breen provides the missing piece in the story of America's founding, introducing us to the ordinary men and women who turned a faltering rebellion against colonial rule into an unexpectedly potent and enduring revolution. Over eight years of war, ordinary Americans accomplished something extraordinary. Far from the actions of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, they took responsibility for the course of the revolution. They policed their neighbors, sent troops and weapons to distant strangers committed to the same cause, and identified friends and traitors. By taking up the reins of power but also setting its limits, they ensured America's success. Without their participation there would have been no victory over Great Britain, no independence. The colonial rebellion would have ended like so many others--in failure. The driving force behind the creation of a country based on the will of the people, T. H. Breen shows, was in fact the people itself. In villages, towns, and cities from Georgia to New Hampshire, Americans managed local affairs, negotiated shared sacrifice, and participated in a political system in which each believed they were as good as any other. Presenting hundreds of stories, Breen captures the powerful sense of equality and responsibility resulting from this process of self-determination. With striking originality, Breen restores these missing Americans to our founding and shows why doing so is essential for understanding why our revolution ended differently from others that have shaped the modern world. In the midst of revolution's anger, fear, and passion--the forgotten elements in any effective resistance--these Americans preserved a political culture based on the rule of law. In the experiences of these unsung revolutionaries can be seen the creation of America's singular political identity.
American Insurgents, American Patriots by T. H. Breen
Call Number: E209 .B76 2010
ISBN: 9780809075881
Published/Created: 2010-05-11
Before there could be a revolution, there was a rebellion; before patriots, there were insurgents. Challenging and displacing decades of received wisdom, T. H. Breen's strikingly original book explains how ordinary Americans--most of them members of farm families living in small communities--were drawn into a successful insurgency against imperial authority. This is the compelling story of our national political origins that most Americans do not know. It is a story of rumor, charity, vengeance, and restraint. American Insurgents, American Patriots reminds us that revolutions are violent events. They provoke passion and rage, a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends, a deep sense of betrayal, and a strong religious conviction that God expects an oppressed people to defend their rights. The American Revolution was no exception. A few celebrated figures in the Continental Congress do not make for a revolution. It requires tens of thousands of ordinary men and women willing to sacrifice, kill, and be killed. Breen not only gives the history of these ordinary Americans but, drawing upon a wealth of rarely seen documents, restores their primacy to American independence. Mobilizing two years before the Declaration of Independence, American insurgents in all thirteen colonies concluded that resistance to British oppression required organized violence against the state. They channeled popular rage through elected committees of safety and observation, which before 1776 were the heart of American resistance. American Insurgents, American Patriots is the stunning account of their insurgency, without which there would have been no independent republic as we know it.
George Washington's Journey by T. H. Breen
Call Number: E312 .B77 2016
ISBN: 9781451675429
Published/Created: 2016-01-12
T.H. Breen introduces us to a George Washington we rarely meet. During his first term as president, he decided that the only way to fulfill the Revolution was to take the new federal government directly to the people. He organized an extraordinary journey carrying him to all thirteen states. It transformed American political culture. For Washington, the stakes were high. If the nation fragmented, as it had almost done after the war, it could never become the strong, independent nation for which he had fought. In scores of communities, he communicated a powerful and enduring message--that America was now a nation, not a loose collection of states. And the people responded to his invitation in ways that he could never have predicted.
The Marketplace of Revolution by T. H. Breen
Call Number: E209 .B77 2004
ISBN: 0195063953
Published/Created: 2004-02-26
The Marketplace of Revolution offers a boldly innovative interpretation of the mobilization of ordinary Americans on the eve of independence. Breen explores how colonists who came from very different ethnic and religious backgrounds managed to overcome difference and create a common cause capable of galvanizing resistance. In a richly interdisciplinary narrative that weaves insights into a changing material culture with analysis of popular political protests, Breen shows how virtual strangers managed to communicate a sense of trust that effectively united men and women long before they had established a nation of their own. The Marketplace of Revolution argues that the colonists' shared experience as consumers in a new imperial economy afforded them the cultural resources that they needed to develop a radical strategy of political protest--the consumer boycott. Never before had a mass political movement organized itself around disruption of the marketplace. As Breen demonstrates, often through anecdotes about obscure Americans, communal rituals of shared sacrifice provided an effective means to educate and energize a dispersed populace. The boycott movement--the signature of American resistance--invited colonists traditionally excluded from formal political processes to voice their opinions about liberty and rights within a revolutionary marketplace, an open, raucous public forum that defined itself around subscription lists passed door-to-door, voluntary associations, street protests, destruction of imported British goods, and incendiary newspaper exchanges. Within these exchanges was born a new form of politics in which ordinary man and women--precisely the people most often overlooked in traditional accounts of revolution--experienced an exhilarating surge of empowerment. Breen recreates an "empire of goods" that transformed everyday life during the mid-eighteenth century. Imported manufactured items flooded into the homes of colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia. The Marketplace of Revolution explains how at a moment of political crisis Americans gave political meaning to the pursuit of happiness and learned how to make goods speak to power.
Colonial America in an Atlantic World by T. H. Breen; Timothy D. Hall
Call Number: E188 .B79 2004
ISBN: 0321061810
Published/Created: 2003-08-06
The book presents the Atlantic coast history as a story of interaction and adaptation among the peoples of the four continents, and discusses the variety of social, political, environmental, and cultural processes set in motion by European exploration and settlement. Beginning with a chapter on the pre-Columbian background of Europe, Africa, and North and South America, this lively narrative traces the history of colonial America to 1763. Covering British, Spanish, French, and Dutch colonization, the book examines colonial development in the North American colonies along the Atlantic coast and in the borderlands, the North American interior, and the Caribbean.
"Myne Owne Ground": Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 by T. H. Breen; Stephen Innes
Call Number: F232.E2 B73 2004
ISBN: 0195175379
Published/Created: 2004-09-16
Ever since its publication twenty-five years ago, Myne Owne Ground has challenged readers to rethink much of what is taken for granted about American race relations. During the earliest decades of Virginia history, some men and women who arrived in the New World as slaves achieved freedom and formed a stable community on the Eastern shore. Holding their own with white neighbors for much of the 17th century, these free blacks purchased freedom for family members, amassed property, established plantations, and acquired laborers. T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes reconstruct a community in which ownership of property was as significant as skin color in structuring social relations. Why this model of social interaction in race relations did not survive makes this a critical and urgent work of history. In a new foreword, Breen and Innes reflect on the origins of this book, setting it into the context of Atlantic and particularly African history.
Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution by T. H. Breen
Call Number: F229 .B8 2001
ISBN: 0691089140
Published/Created: 2001-08-12
The great Tidewater planters of mid-eighteenth-century Virginia were fathers of the American Revolution. Perhaps first and foremost, they were also anxious tobacco farmers, harried by a demanding planting cycle, trans-Atlantic shipping risks, and their uneasy relations with English agents. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries lived in a world that was dominated by questions of debt from across an ocean but also one that stressed personal autonomy. T. H. Breen's study of this tobacco culture focuses on how elite planters gave meaning to existence. He examines the value-laden relationships--found in both the fields and marketplaces--that led from tobacco to politics, from agrarian experience to political protest, and finally to a break with the political and economic system that they believed threatened both personal independence and honor.
American Stories: A History of the United States by H. W. Brands; Timothy H. Breen; R.H. Williams; Ariela J. Gross
Call Number: E178 .B813 2019 CABIN BRANCH
ISBN: 9780134828404
Published/Created: 2019-01-01
The Power of Words by T. H. Breen
Call Number: E173 .P83 1996
ISBN: 0065011120
Published/Created: 1997-01-14
Shaping Southern Society: The Colonial Experience by T. H. Breen (Editor)
Call Number: E441 .S5 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 0195020782
Published/Created: 1976-07-15
The character of the good ruler;: A study of Puritan political ideas in New England, 1630-1730 by T. H. Breen
Call Number: JK54 .B74 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 0300011865
Published/Created: 1970-01-01
Imagining the Past: East Hampton Histories by T. H. Breen
Call Number: F129.E13 B74 1989
ISBN: 0201067498
Published/Created: 1989-01-01
Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America by T. H. Breen
Call Number: F67 .B83
ISBN: 0195027280
Published/Created: 1980-09-11
This collection of essays is concerned with two main issues: first, the way in which the local origins of English colonists influenced their attitudes and adaptation to North America; and second, the contrast between the settlements of Massachusetts and Virginia.

John Sexton is former president of New York University, a legal scholar, and the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law at the NYU School of Law. Before NYU, Sexton served as law clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court (1980-1981), and to Judges David Bazelon and Harold Leventhal of the United States Court of Appeals (1979-1980).

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Sexton worked on a collection of essays about the place and promise of higher education.

Featured Video

May 26, 2016

John Sexton offers his perspective on the future of American higher education. The university has been one of American society's most durable institutions for more than a century—and the modern research university its most sophisticated presentation. Yet globalization, technology and market forces are likely to reshape the form and function of the research university in the coming decades. Sexton explores the relevant forces and their likely effects.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

Standing for Reason by John Sexton; Gordon Brown
Call Number: LB41 .S479 2019
ISBN: 9780300243376
Published/Created: 2019-04-16
A powerful case for the importance of universities as an antidote to the "secular dogmatism" that increasingly infects political discourse. John Sexton argues that over six decades, a "secular dogmatism," impenetrable by dialogue or reason, has come to dominate political discourse in America. Political positions, elevated to the status of doctrinal truths, now simply are "revealed." Our leaders and our citizens suffer from an allergy to nuance and complexity, and the enterprise of thought is in danger. Sexton sees our universities, the engines of knowledge and stewards of thought, as the antidote, and he describes the policies university leaders must embrace if their institutions are to serve this role. Acknowledging the reality of our increasingly interconnected world--and drawing on his experience as president of New York University when it opened campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai--Sexton advocates for "global network universities" as a core aspect of a new educational landscape and as the crucial foundation-blocks of an interlocking world characterized by "secular ecumenism."
Redefining the Supreme Court's Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Judicial Process by Samuel Estreicher; John E. Sexton
Call Number: KF8748 .E87 1986
ISBN: 0300037341
Published/Created: 1986-01-01
Discusses the workload crisis of the United States Supreme Court and argues the role of the Court should be as manager of the national lawmaking process.
How Free are We? What the Constitution Says We Can and Cannot Do by John J. Sexton; Nat Brandt; James MacGregor Burns (Introduction by); Edward M. Kennedy (Foreword by)
Call Number: KF4550.Z9 S38 1986
ISBN: 0871314746
Published/Created: 1986-01-01
A history of the Constitution and amendments plus a discussion of the rights and liberties they have established.

Mary Dudziak is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University. Duziak is an expert in constitutional law, legal history, diplomatic history, and civil rights history. She has written extensively about the impact of foreign affairs on U.S. civil rights policy during the Cold War.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Dudziak used the Library’s collections to research and write her book War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Featured Videos

June 08, 2017

The Library sponsored a symposium examining the effects of World War I on civil liberties in the United States. Mary Dudziak was among the featured panelists.

September 25, 2015

As members of Congress gathered in April 1917 to decide whether to declare war on Germany, some legislators arrived with battle scars from a previous conflict—the Civil War, which informed their understanding of the new conflict. Historian Mary Dudziak explored what it would take to generate sufficient support to enter a new, faraway war: a politics of catastrophe.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences by Mary L. Dudziak
Call Number: U21.2 .D75 2012
ISBN: 9780199775231
Published/Created: 2012-02-07
When is wartime? On the surface, it is a period of time in which a society is at war. But we now live in what President Obama has called "an age without surrender ceremonies," as the Administration announced an "end to conflict in Iraq," even though conflict on the ground is ongoing. It is no longer easy to distinguish between wartime and peacetime. Mary Dudziak argues that wartime is not as discrete a time period as we like to think. Instead, America has been engaged in some form of ongoing overseas armed conflict for over a century. Meanwhile policy makers and the American public continue to view wars as exceptional events that eventually give way to normal peace times. This has two consequences. First, because war is thought to be exceptional, "wartime" remains a shorthand argument justifying extreme actions like torture and detention without trial. Second, ongoing warfare is enabled by the inattention of the American people. More disconnected than ever from the wars their nation is fighting, public disengagement leaves us without political restraints on the exercise of American war powers.
Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey by Mary L. Dudziak
Call Number: KSK2095 .D83 2008
ISBN: 9780195329018
Published/Created: 2008-07-02
Thurgood Marshall became a living icon of civil rights when he argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954. Six years later, he was at a crossroads. A rising generation of activists were making sit-ins and demonstrations rather than lawsuits and legal maneuvering the hallmarks of the civil rights movement. What role, he wondered, could he now play? When in 1960 Kenyan independence leaders asked him to help write their constitution, Marshall seized the occasion and threw himself into their cause. Here was a new arena in which law might serve as the tool with which to forge a just society, an opportunity to prove that legal means offered the brightest hope for progress. In Exporting American Dreams, Mary Dudziak recounts with poignancy and power the untold story of Marshall's journey to Africa. His experience in Kenya was emotional as well as intellectual, and during it he developed ties of friendship with, among others, Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta. Marshall served as advisor to the Kenyans, who needed to demonstrate to both Great Britain and to the world that they would treat minority races (whites and Asians) fairly once Africans took power. He crafted a bill of rights, aiding constitutional negotiations that enabled peaceful regime change, rather than violent resistance. Marshall's involvement with Kenya's foundation affirmed his belief in progress by legal means, while also forcing him to understand how the struggle for justice could be compromised by the imperatives of sovereignty. Marshall's beliefs were most sorely tested later in the decade when he became a Supreme Court Justice, even as American cities erupted in flames and civil rights progress stalled. But his journey to Africa remained a source of inspiration on which he continued to draw.
Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders by Leti Volpp (Editor); Mary L. Dudziak (Editor)
Call Number: KF4635 .L44 2006
ISBN: 0801884144
Published/Created: 2006-05-08
This collection focuses broadly on the role of law in the construction of U.S. borders and takes up an important question raised by the global turn in American studies scholarship: once territory becomes less critical to scholarship in the discipline, what constitutes the frame of American studies? For this project, a "border" is not simply a territorial boundary. Borders are created through formal legal controls on entry and exit, through the construction of rights of citizenship and noncitizenship, and through the regulation of American power in other parts of the world. Where legal rights are at issue, borders and territory continue to play a powerful role, especially as certain spaces, such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are marked by the U.S. government as outside legal restraints on government power. Yet the law also extends the United States beyond its literal borders, through, for example, efforts to export democracy to the Middle East.
September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? by Mary L. Dudziak (Editor); Gilbert M. Joseph (Contribution by); Elaine Tyler May (Contribution by); Emily S. Rosenberg (Contribution by); Marilyn B. Young (Contribution by)
Call Number: HV6432.7 .S45 2003
ISBN: 0822332299
Published/Created: 2003-10-28
Hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the idea that the September 11 attacks had "changed everything" permeated American popular and political discussion. In the period since then, the events of September 11 have been used to justify profound changes in U.S. public policy and foreign relations. Bringing together leading scholars of history, law, literature, and Islam, September 11 in History asks whether the attacks and their aftermath truly marked a transition in U.S. and world history or whether they are best understood in the context of pre-existing historical trajectories. From a variety of perspectives, the contributors to this collection scrutinize claims about September 11, in terms of both their historical validity and their consequences. This collection ultimately reveals that everything did not change on September 11, 2001, but that some foundations of democratic legitimacy have been significantly eroded by claims that it did.
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy by Mary L. Dudziak
Call Number: E185.61 .D85 2000
ISBN: 0691016615
Published/Created: 2000-12-03
In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and "the Negro problem" became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson. In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress. Archival information supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of people: an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam.

William Julius Wilson is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Wilson has remained one of America’s most distinguished thinkers on issues of urban poverty, race, and class relations, and social inequality. His 1987 book, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass and Public Policy, is a staple in American college courses that address issues of race, class, and poverty.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Wilson revisited his research on race and inequality through the lens of recent events. In particular, Wilson continued to refine theories laid out in his seminal work The Declining Significance of Race, where he suggested that economic class was more critical than race in determining life outcomes.

Featured Videos

May 21, 2015

In his book, The Declining Significance of Race (1978), William Julius Wilson featured two major themes: the effect of fundamental economic and political shifts on the changing relative importance of race and class as a determinant of a black person's life trajectory, and the swing in the concentration of racial conflict from the economic sector to the sociopolitical order. Wilson reflects on these themes and their application to more recent developments in American race and ethnic relations involving not only African Americans but also other groups, including whites and Latinos.

June 11, 2015

As the finale to the 15th anniversary celebration of the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, six leading scholars, including William Julius Wilson, discuss why freedom of expression matters.

Blog Post

The following post appeared in the Library of Congress blog—Insights: Scholarly Work at the John W. Kluge Center.

William Julius Wilson Discusses “The Declining Significance of Race” on Voice of America’s Press Conference USA
During his tenure as the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance, Wilson re-examined the arguments put forth in his book to see if they apply to the situation today. Wilson asserted that the points he raised in 1978 now seem to apply to all groups; that income inequality has increased across racial and ethnic populations, and that class has become a very significant factor in determining life chances. Wilson discussed his research with host Carol Castiel of Voice of America’s “Press Conference USA,” in an interview recorded live inside The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: HV4045 .W55 2012 FT MEADE
ISBN: 9780226901268
Published/Created: 2012-07-10
William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in the inner city, Wilson offers essential information and a number of solutions to policymakers.
The Declining Significance of Race by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: E185 .W73 2012
ISBN: 9780226901411
Published/Created: 2012-06-27
When first published in 1980, The Declining Significance of Race, immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy.
More Than Just Race by William Julius Wilson; Henry Louis Gates (Contribution by)
Call Number: HN90.S6 W55 2009
ISBN: 9780393067057
Published/Created: 2009-03-09
This book offers a new analytic framework to three politically fraught social problems: the persistence of the inner-city ghetto, the plight of low-skilled black males, and the fragmentation of the African American family. Though the discussion of racial inequality is typically ideologically polarized--conservatives emphasize cultural factors like worldviews and behaviors while liberals emphasize institutional forces--Wilson dares to consider both institutional and cultural factors as causes of the persistence of racial inequality. He reaches the controversial conclusion that, while structural and cultural forces are inextricably linked, public policy can change the racial status quo only by reforming the institutions that reinforce it.
There Goes the Neighborhood by Richard P. Taub; William Julius Wilson
Call Number: HN80.C5 W55 2006
ISBN: 9780394579368
Published/Created: 2006-10-17
This book tries to understand how and why certain urban residents react to looming racial, ethnic, or class changes, and what their reactions mean in terms of the stability of their neighborhood. Using first-person narratives and interviews throughout, There Goes the Neighborhood, gives voice to attitudes and realities few Americans are willing to look at. The findings lay bare a disturbing and incontrovertible truth: that the American dream of racial integration, forty-two years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, still eludes us and, in fact, may not happen in the foreseeable future. The authors examine the ways in which forces that contribute to strong neighborhoods work against the idea of integration. They explain why residents of neighborhoods with weak social organizations often choose to move rather than confront unwanted ethnic or racial change. Finally, the authors make clear that the racial and ethnic tensions that have become all but inherent to urban neighborhoods have urgent implications for Americans at every level of society.
Youth in Cities by Marta Tienda (Editor); William Julius Wilson (Editor)
Call Number: HQ796 .Y5935 2002
ISBN: 0521809088
Published/Created: 2002-11-11
There is growing awareness of the common difficulties experienced by poor young people who grow up in cities--crime and juvenile delinquency, limited access to education, the spread of infectious diseases, homelessness, and high rates of unprotected sex. They must contend with weak families and social institutions, poor labor market prospects, and for the most unfortunate, the ravages of gang war and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Chapters in this volume present and assess comparative evidence on the well-being of urban youth and proven interventions for assuaging the deleterious effects of poverty.
The Ghetto Underclass: Social Science Perspectives by William Julius Wilson (Editor)
Call Number: HV4045 .G54 1993 FT MEADE
ISBN: 0803952724
Published/Created: 1993-08-17
William Julius Wilson's controversial thesis states that the fragmentation of the black community along class lines has resulted in a group of blacks who have left the inner city for middle-class suburban life, leaving behind the ghetto underclass of very disadvantaged poor. This thesis has had an enormous impact on the study of urban life, race, and society. Originally published as a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Ghetto Underclass addresses questions from theoretical, empirical, and policy perspectives. Wilson and other leading social scientists cover demographic and industrial transitions, family patterns, sexual behavior, immigration, and homelessness of the urban underclass. Wilson's introduction updates recent work on this topic since publication of the Annals issue. This book should be read by all students and professionals of urban studies, ethnic studies, sociology, policy studies, political science, social work, social welfare, and education.
When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: HV4045 .W553 1996
ISBN: 0394579356
Published/Created: 1996-08-20
For the first time in the 20th century, the majority of adults in the inner cities are not working. William Julius Wilson analyzes the disappearance of work and its effects on the inner city of Chicago.
Power, Racism and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: HT1521 .W57 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 002935580X
Published/Created: 1976-01-01
The Declining Significance of Race by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: E185 .W73 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 0226901289
Published/Created: 2003-01-01
Deals with the contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This book presents a discussion about race, class, and social policy.
Sociology and the Public Agenda by William Julius Wilson (Editor)
Call Number: HN28 .S63 1993 FT MEADE
ISBN: 0803950837
Published/Created: 1993-03-02
The editor of this volume, William Julius Wilson, asserts that sociology's ostrich-like stance threatens to leave the discipline in a position of irrelevance to the world at large and compromises the support of policymakers, funders, media, and the public. Wilson's vision is of a sociology attuned to the public agenda, influencing public policy through both short and long-range analysis from a sociological perspective. Using a variety of policy issues, perspectives, methods, and cases, the distinguished contributors to this volume both demonstrate and emphasize Wilson's ideas. Sociology and the Public Agenda is an insightful book for scholars of social policy, and also those interested in research design issues.
Through Different Eyes: Black and White Perspectives on American Race Relations by Peter Isaac Rose; Stanley Rothman; William J. Wilson
Call Number: E185.615 .R58 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 0195015975
Published/Created: 1973-01-01
The Bridge over the Racial Divide by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: E185.615 .W545 1999
ISBN: 0520222261
Published/Created: 1999-11-01
In this book William Julius Wilson focuses on the rising inequality in American society and the need for a progressive, multiracial political coalition to combat it. The Bridge over the Racial Divide demonstrates how political power is disproportionately concentrated among the most advantaged segments of society and how the monetary, trade, and tax policies of recent years have deepened this power imbalance. Developing his earlier views on race in contemporary society, the author gives an important diagnosis of the problem of rising social inequality in the United States and details a set of recommendations for dealing with it. Wilson argues that as long as middle- and working-class groups are fragmented along racial lines, they will fail to see how their combined efforts could change the political imbalance and thus promote policies that reflect their interests. He shows how a vision of American society that highlights racial differences rather than commonalities makes it difficult for Americans to see the need and appreciate the potential for mutual political support across racial lines. Multiracial political cooperation could be enhanced if we can persuade groups to focus more on the interests they hold in common, including overcoming stagnating and declining real incomes that relate to changes in the global economy, Wilson argues. He advocates a cross-race, class-based alliance of working-and middle-class Americans to pursue policies that will deal with the eroding strength of the nation's equalizing institutions, including public education, unions, and political structures that promote the interests of ordinary families. He also advocates a reconstructed "affirmative opportunity" program that benefits African Americans without antagonizing whites. Using theoretical arguments and case studies, Wilson examines how a broad-based political constituency can be created, sustained, and energized.
The Declining Significance of Race by William Julius Wilson
Call Number: E185 .W73 1980
ISBN: 0226901297
Published/Created: 1980-12-15
This edition includes a major essay in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding his book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy.
Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social Policy by Katherine McFate (Editor); Roger Lawson (Editor); William Julius Wilson (Editor)
Call Number: HC240.9.I5 P685 1995
ISBN: 0871545101
Published/Created: 1995-03-30

Jennifer L. Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard College Professor, and the former Chair of the Department of Government at Harvard University. Working at the intersection of American politics and political philosophy, Hochschild’s writings explore issues of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and immigration and their impact on political participation and political thought.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Hochschild researched the politics and ideology of genomic science, specifically the links between genomics and governance.

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Jennifer L. Hochschild discusses the rapid growth of genomic science, and its likely effect on our identities and on the criminal-justice system.

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The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

Do Facts Matter?: Information and Misinformation in American Politics by Jennifer Hochschild; Katherine Levine Einstein
Call Number: JK1764 .H63 2015
ISBN: 9780806146867
Published/Created: 2015-01-20
A democracy falters when most of its citizens are uninformed or misinformed, when misinformation affects political decisions and actions, or when political actors foment misinformation--the state of affairs the United States faces today, as this timely book makes painfully clear. In Do Facts Matter? Jennifer L. Hochschild and Katherine Levine Einstein start with Thomas Jefferson's ideal citizen, who knows and uses correct information to make policy or political choices. What, then, the authors ask, are the consequences if citizens are informed but do not act on their knowledge? More serious, what if they do act, but on incorrect information? Analyzing the use, nonuse, and misuse of facts in various cases--such as the call to impeach Bill Clinton, the response to global warming, Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court, the case for invading Iraq, beliefs about Barack Obama's birthplace and religion, and the Affordable Care Act--Hochschild and Einstein argue that errors of commission (that is, acting on falsehoods) are even more troublesome than errors of omission. While citizens' inability or unwillingness to use the facts they know in their political decision making may be frustrating, their acquisition and use of incorrect "knowledge" pose a far greater threat to a democratic political system. This book looks beyond individual citizens to the role that political elites play in informing, misinforming, and encouraging or discouraging the use of accurate or mistaken information or beliefs. Hochschild and Einstein show that if a well-informed electorate remains a crucial component of a successful democracy, the deliberate concealment of political facts poses its greatest threat.
Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation by Jennifer Hochschild (Editor); Jacqueline Chattopadhyay (Editor); Claudine Gay (Editor); Michael Jones-Correa (Editor)
Call Number: JV6255 .O98 2013
ISBN: 9780199311316
Published/Created: 2013-07-31
Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to consider pathways by which immigrants may be incorporated into the political processes of western democracies. It builds on a tradition of studying immigrant incorporation, but each chapter innovates by moving beyond singular accounts of particular groups and locations toward a general causal model with the scope and breadth to apply across groups, places, and time. The book addresses three key analytic questions: what, if anything, are the distinctive features of immigrants or immigrant groups? How broadly should one define and study politics? What are the initial premises for analyzing pathways toward incorporation; does one learn more by starting from an assumption of racialization and exclusion or from an assumption of engagement and inclusion? By including historians, sociologists, and political scientists, by ranging across North America and Western Europe, by addressing successful and failed incorporative efforts, this handbook offers guides for anyone seeking to develop a dynamic, unified, and supple model of immigrant political incorporation.
Creating a New Racial Order by Jennifer L. Hochschild; Traci R. Burch; Vesla M. Weaver
Call Number: HB3505 .H635 2012
ISBN: 9780691152998
Published/Created: 2012-02-26
The American racial order--the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation's races and ethnicities--is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. The authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come. The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama's election--not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices. Portraying a vision, not of a postracial America, but of a different racial America, this book examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.
Bringing Outsiders in: Transatlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation by Jennifer Hochschild (Editor); John Mollenkopf (Editor)
Call Number: JV6351 .B75 2009
ISBN: 9780801448119
Published/Created: 2009-05-20
For immigrants, politics can play a significant role in determining whether and how they assimilate. In Bringing Outsiders In, leading social scientists present individual cases and work toward a comparative synthesis of how immigrants affect and are affected by civic life on both sides of the Atlantic. Just as in the United States, large immigrant minority communities have been emerging across Europe. While these communities usually make up less than one-tenth of national populations, they typically have a large presence in urban areas, sometimes approaching a majority. That immigrants can have an even greater political salience than their population might suggest has been demonstrated in recent years in places as diverse as Sweden and France. Attending to how local and national states encourage or discourage political participation, the authors assess the relative involvement of immigrants in a wide range of settings.
The American Dream and the Public Schools by Jennifer Hochschild; Nathan Scovronick
Call Number: LC89 .H63 2003
ISBN: 0195152786
Published/Created: 2003-03-06
Why is education policy so contentious? Do conflicts over specific issues in schooling have anything in common? Are there general principles that can help us resolve these disputes? In this book the authors find the source of many debates over schooling in the multiple goals and internal contradictions of the national ideology we call the American dream. They also propose a framework for helping Americans get past acrimonious debates in order to help all children learn. The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual education, multicultural education, and ability grouping. These seem to be separate problems, but much of the contention over them comes down to the same thing--an apparent conflict, rooted in the American dream, between policies designed to promote each student's ability to pursue success and those designed to insure the good of all students or the nation as a whole. The authors show how policies to promote individual success too often benefit only those already privileged by race or class, and too often conflict, unnecessarily, with policies that are intended to benefit everyone. The book also examines issues such as creationism and Afrocentrism, where the disputes lie between those who attack the validity of the American dream and those who believe that such a challenge has no place in the public schools. At the end of the book, the authors examine the impact of our nation's rapid racial and ethnic transformation on the pursuit of all of these goals, and they propose ways to make public education work better to help all children succeed and become the citizens we need.
Social Policies for Children by Irwin Garfinkel; Jennifer L. Hochschild (Editor); Sara S. McLanahan (Editor)
Call Number: HV741 .S62 1996 FT MEADE
ISBN: 0815736665
Published/Created: 1996-03-01
While nearly everyone agrees that America's children are in trouble, there is considerable debate over what kind of trouble they are in. This book presents a new set of social policies designed to alleviate problems facing the future of America's children.
Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation by Jennifer L. Hochschild
Call Number: E185.615 .H55 1995
ISBN: 0691029571
Published/Created: 1995-09-10
The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent. The author combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks. Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.
The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation by Jennifer L. Hochschild; Joseph Hochschild
Call Number: LC214.2 .H63 1984
ISBN: 0300031149
Published/Created: 1984-09-10
Conventional wisdom and democratic theory hold that the best way to achieve controversial policy changes is in small, cautious steps and with participation of the various groups involved. Yet America's thirty years of experience with school desegregation shows this belief to be false. In this book, Jennifer Hochschild argues that when incremental and participatory methods are used to desegregate schools, both blacks and whites end up worse off--with little freedom and equality for blacks, much disruption and pain for both races, and few educational gains for anyone. However, school desegregation can succeed--for everyone--when rapid and extensive change is imposed by nonelected officials, at a centralized level, and without citizen involvement. Hochschild examines the record of school desegregation to show why this is so. She shows that racism is deeply embedded in our society and that whites may not be as willing to give it up as they think. Hochschild contends that we must choose between superficial "safe" changes that benefit a few at the expense of many and profound, deeply unpopular changes that in the long run will liberate most.
Thirty Years after Brown by Jennifer L. Hochschild
Call Number: KF4155 .H58 1985
ISBN: 0941410498
Published/Created: 1986-01-01
This book discusses various interpretations of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education and their implications for school desegregation policy; describes the demographic and political constraints on further desegregation; and identifies effective strategies for future efforts at desegregation.
What's Fair? American Beliefs about Distributive Justice by Jennifer L. Hochschild
Call Number: HC110.I5 H62
ISBN: 0674950860
Published/Created: 1981-12-21
The search for equality has been an enduring one in the United States. Yet there has been little significant change in the distribution of wealth over the generations, while the political ideology of socialism has been rejected outright by most people. Jennifer Hochschild discovers that it is the non rich themselves who do not support the downward redistribution of wealth. Using a long questionnaire and in-depth interviews, she examines the ideals and contemporary practices of Americans on the subject of distributive justice. She finds that both rich and poor Americans perceive three realms in their lives: the private, the political, and the economic. People tend to support equality in two of the realms: the private, where fundamental socialization takes place in the family, school, and neighborhood, and the political, where issues arise about taxes, private property, rights, political representation, social welfare policies, and visions of utopia. But in the economic realm of the workplace, class structure, and opportunity, Americans favor maintaining material differences among people. Hochschild shows how divergence between ideals and practices, and especially between Americans' views of political and economic justice, produces ambivalence. Issues involving redistribution of wealth force people to think about whether they prefer political equalization or economic differentiation.

Gerhard Casper served as the ninth president of Stanford University and is a scholar of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and jurisprudence. Born in Germany, Casper studied law at the universities of Freiburg, Hamburg, and Yale. Casper’s writings tackle subjects including legal realism, the workload of the Supreme Court, and the separation of powers in the United States.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Casper researched two separatetopics: the views of German sociologist Max Weber on democratic governance and the 1795 U.S. Naturalization Act.

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Gerhard Casper talks about Caesarism (political absolutism or dictatorship) in democratic politics, a concept that was of considerable importance to Max Weber, the German political economist and sociologist considered to be one of the founders of the modern study of sociology. "In reading Weber one cannot help but be struck by the relevance to our own historical situation. As we encounter Caesarist tendencies in contemporary politics, what Weber has to say about 'governance' is anything but theoretical," says Casper.

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The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

The Winds of Freedom by Gerhard Casper
Call Number: LB2322.2 .C39 2014
ISBN: 9780300196917
Published/Created: 2014-02-25
As president of Stanford University, Gerhard Casper established a reputation as a tireless, forward-thinking advocate for higher education. His speeches, renowned for their intelligence, humanity, wit, and courage, confront head-on the most pressing concerns facing our nation's universities. From affirmative action and multiculturalism to free speech, politics, public service, and government regulation, Casper addresses the controversial issues currently debated on college campuses and in our highest courts. Each chapter explores the context of these challenges to higher education and provides Casper's stirring orations delivered in response. In addressing these vital concerns, Casper outlines the freedoms that a university must encourage and defend in the ongoing pursuit of knowledge.
Separating Power: Essays on the Founding Period by Gerhard Casper
Call Number: KF4565 .C37 1997
ISBN: 0674801407
Published/Created: 1997-04-25
The separation of powers along functional lines--legislative, executive, and judicial--has been a core concept of American constitutionalism ever since the Revolution. As noted constitutional law scholar Gerhard Casper points out in this collection of essays, barren assertions of the importance of keeping the powers separate do not capture the complexity of the task when it is seen as separating power flowing from a single source--the people. Popular sovereignty did not underlie earlier versions of the separation of powers doctrine. Casper illustrates some of the challenges faced by Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, Gallatin, Jefferson, and many others in Congress and the executive branch as they guided the young nation, setting precedents for future generations. He discusses areas such as congressional-executive relations, foreign affairs, appropriations, and the Judiciary Act of 1789 from the separation of powers vantage point. The picture of our government's formative years that emerges here, of a rich and overlapping understanding of responsibilities and authority, runs counter to rigid, syllogistic views. Separating Power gives us a clear portrait of the issues of separation of power in the founding period, as well as suggesting that in modern times we should be reluctant to tie separation of powers notions to their own procrustean bed.
The Workload of the Supreme Court by Gerhard Casper; Richard A. Posner
Call Number: KF8742 .C35
ISBN: 0910058784
Published/Created: 1986-07-01
Examines the history of the workload problem of the Court, analyzes causes of the increased caseload and its impact on the Court's effectiveness.
Washington vs. Glucksberg (1997) by Gerald Gunther (Editor); Gerhard Casper (Editor)
Call Number: KF224.G58 U55 1998
ISBN: 1556557396
Published/Created: 1998-01-01

John Thomas Noonan was an accomplished jurist of the federal courts and philosopher, historian, theologian and a scholar of law. His writings on contraception, abortion, euthanasia, bribery, morality, and ethics impacted American elected officials and the Vatican. Noonan helped open a new line of thought about jurisprudence as a process of psychology, role play, value, and language akin to the process of literature. In October 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed Noonan to the newly created 27th seat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where he served until 1996.

As a scholar-in-residence at the Kluge Center, Noonan investigated the teachings of the Catholic Church on four different kinds of conduct over a period of 2,000 years through letters, notarial acts, biographies, histories, and treatises: the lending of money at a profit; the buying, selling and keeping of human beings as property; the persecution of heretics as the duty of Christian rulers; and the rules on marriage and remarriage.

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The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

A Church That Can and Cannot Change by John T. Noonan
Call Number: BX946 .N66 2005
ISBN: 0268036039
Published/Created: 2005-01-15
John T. Noonan demonstrates that the moral teaching of the Catholic Church has changed and continues to change without abandoning its foundational commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Specifically, Noonan looks at the profound changes that have occurred over the centuries in Catholic moral teaching on freedom of conscience, lending for a profit, and slavery. He also offers a close examination of the change now in progress concerning divorce. In these changes Noonan perceives the Catholic Church to be a vigorous, living organism answering new questions with new answers, and enlarging the capacity of believers to learn through experience and empathy what love demands. He contends that the impetus to change comes from a variety of sources, including prayer, meditation on Scripture, new theological insights and analyses, the evolution of human institutions, and the examples and instruction given by persons of good will. Noonan also states that the Church cannot change its commitment to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Given this absolute, how can the moral teaching of the Church change? Noonan finds this question unanswerable when asked in the abstract. But in the context of the specific facts and events he discusses in this book, an answer becomes clear. As our capacity to grasp the Gospel grows, so too, our understanding and compassion, which give life to the Gospel commandments of love, grow.
Contraception by John T. Noonan
Call Number: HQ766.3 .N6 1986
ISBN: 0674168526
Published/Created: 1986-06-26
Originally published in 1965, Contraception received unanimous acclaim from all quarters as the first thorough, scholarly, objective analysis of Catholic doctrine on birth control. More than ever this subject is of acute concern to a world facing serious population problems, and John T. Noonan has written an important new appendix examining the development of and debates over the doctrine in the past twenty years. The author traces the Church's position from its earliest foundations to the present, and analyzes the conflicts and personal decisions that have affected the theologians' teachings on the subject.
Narrowing the Nation's Power by John T. Noonan
Call Number: KF1322 .N66 2002
ISBN: 0520235746
Published/Created: 2002-08-21
Narrowing the Nation's Power is the tale of how a cohesive majority of the Supreme Court has, in the last six years, cut back the power of Congress and enhanced the autonomy of the fifty states. The immunity from suit of the sovereign, Blackstone taught, is necessary to preserve the people's idea that the sovereign is "a superior being." Promoting the common law doctrine of sovereign immunity to constitutional status, the current Supreme Court has used it to shield the states from damages for age discrimination, disability discrimination, and the violation of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and fair labor standards. Not just the states themselves, but every state-sponsored entity--a state insurance scheme, a state university's research lab, the Idaho Potato Commission--has been insulated from paying damages in tort or contract. Sovereign immunity, as Noonan puts it, has metastasized. Crippled by the states' immunity, Congress has been further brought to heel by the Supreme Court's recent invention of two rules. The first rule: Congress must establish a documentary record that a national evil exists before Congress can legislate to protect life, liberty, or property under the Fourteenth Amendment. The second rule: The response of Congress to the evil must then be both "congruent" and "proportionate." Noonan is a passionate believer in the place of persons in the law. Rules, he claims, are a necessary framework, but they must not obscure law's task of giving justice to persons. His critique of Supreme Court doctrine is driven by this conviction.
The Lustre of Our Country by John T. Noonan
Call Number: BR516 .N59 1998
ISBN: 0520209974
Published/Created: 1998-06-26
This book offers a fresh approach to a freedom that is often taken for granted in the United States, yet is one of the strongest and proudest elements of American culture: religious freedom. Judge John T. Noonan asserts that freedom of religion, as James Madison conceived it, is an American invention previously unknown to any nation on earth. The Lustre of Our Country demonstrates how the idea of religious liberty is central to the American experience and to American influence around the world. Noonan's book is a history of the idea of religious liberty and its relationship with the law. He begins with an intellectual autobiography, describing his own religious and legal training. After setting the stage with autobiography, Noonan turns to history, with each chapter written in a new voice. One chapter takes the form of a catechism (questions and answers), presenting the history of the idea of religious freedom in Christianity and the American colonies. Another chapter on James Madison argues that Madison's support of religious freedom was not purely secular but rather the outcome of his own religious beliefs. A fictional sister of Alexis de Toqueville writes, contrary to her brother's work, that the U.S. government is very closely tied to religion. Other chapters offer straightforward considerations of constitutional law. Throughout the book, Noonan shows how the free exercise of religion led to profound changes in American law--he discusses abolition, temperance, and civil rights--and how the legal notion of religious liberty influenced revolutionary France, Japan, and Russia, as well as the Catholic Church during Vatican II. The Lustre of Our Country is a celebration of religious freedom--a personal and profound statement on what the author considers America's greatest moral contribution to the world.
The Responsible Judge by John T. Noonan (Editor); Kenneth I. Winston (Editor)
Call Number: K2146.A58 R47 1993
ISBN: 0275940225
Published/Created: 1993-09-30
This collection addresses the concept and role of judge, the act of judging and the requirements and potential abuses inherent in the system and process of sitting in judgement. It considers the issues and questions involved in establishing a framework for assessing judicial morality.
The Morality of Abortion by John T. Noonan (Editor, Introduction by)
Call Number: K5181 .M673 1970
ISBN: 0674587251
Published/Created: 1970-01-01
The Role and Responsibility of the Moral Philosopher by John T. Noonan (Editor); Desmond J. Fitzgerald (Editor); Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Editor)
Call Number: B11 .A4 Vol. 56
ISBN: 0918090164
Published/Created: 1982-04-01
The Antelope by John T. Noonan
Call Number: E446 .N63 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 0520033191
Published/Created: 1977-06-01
The Believers and the Powers that Are: Cases, History, and other Data Bearing on the Relation of Religion and Government by John T. Noonan
Call Number: KF4783.A7 N66 1987
ISBN: 0029231612
Published/Created: 1987-09-01
Bribes by John T. Noonan
Call Number: K5261 .N66 1984
ISBN: 0029228808
Published/Created: 1984-11-01
Power to Dissolve by John T. Noonan
Call Number: KBU3897.A55 N66 1972
ISBN: 0674695755
Published/Created: 1972-01-01

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