| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of Kentucky: A Political Biography. By James E. St. Clair and Linda C. Gugin. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. xiv, 394 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-8131-2247-3.)

Originally signed to a baseball contract, Fred M. Vinson instead played big-league Democratic politics, filling whatever position was needed from the Capitol to the Cabinet to the Supreme Court. Despite his willingness, he was a lesser light among Democratic all-stars.	1
Chronically caustic Felix Frankfurter, among his Supreme Court brethren, pronounced the most searing epitaph at Chief Justice Vinson's death, calling it "'the first solid piece of evidence I've ever had that there really is a God'" (p. 325). Frankfurter's harsh assessment was vindicated by a systematic 1970 poll conducted by legal scholars that ranked Vinson as one of the few Supreme Court "failures" (Albert P. Blanstein and Roy M. Mersky, "Rating Supreme Court Justices," in The Rating Game in American Politics, ed.William D. Pederson and Ann McLaurin, 1987, p. 139).	2
The Indiana University Southeast faculty members James E. St. Clair, associate professor of journalism, and Linda C. Gugin, professor of political science, coauthored this highly readable, balanced biography.	. . .

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