| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Lincoln and the Court. By Brian McGinty. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. 375 pp. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-674-02655-1.)

Brian McGinty's work focuses on the Supreme Court's role in the "legal controversies" during Abraham Lincoln's rise to the presidency, through the Civil War, to "the years immediately following when Lincoln's initiatives continued to come before the Court for review" (pp. 11, 10). McGinty has undertaken a tough task, as he wants his book to appeal "to those who are steeped in constitutional history and those who know little about it" (p. 11). Scholars of legal history will find little new in this book, as the issues addressed have been examined in depth in many other works. To his credit, McGinty seamlessly leavens his extensive primary research with material from the secondary literature. For those who know little about the constitutional controversies of the era, this is a good introduction. The key constitutional cases, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Ex parte Merryman (1861), the Prize Cases (1862), Ex parte Vallandigham (1864), Ex parte Milligan (1866), the Test Oath Cases (1867), and the Legal Tender Cases (1863, 1870–1871), are succinctly and deftly presented. McGinty is also sound on the staffing of the Court, integrating the difficulties that the circuit system and political factions imposed on policy makers. He is equally adept at describing the functioning and administration of the Court.

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