| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Republic according to John Marshall Harlan. By Linda Przybyszewski. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xiv, 286 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8078-2493-3. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-4789-5.)

This is an excellent description and analysis of the possible sources and meaning of John Marshall Harlan's judicial decisions. The author points out that Harlan was not considered a great justice until after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), when his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) became widely known for his pronouncement that "The Constitution is color blind." On the strength of the dissent he became commonly cited as the prophet and lone champion of civil rights at the turn of the century. Linda Przybyszewski believes that greatness as defined by scholars of the court may be determined by a yardstick unknown to a justice deemed great. In Harlan's case the accolade bestowed after Brown had no relationship to the opinions he regarded as most important. . . .

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