Book Review

Canada and the United States

The post-World War II civil rights movement renewed interest in John Marshall Harlan, then a relatively obscure Supreme Court justice who had served at the turn of the twentieth century. The subject of recent biographies by Loren P. Beth and Tinsley E. Yarbrough, Harlan has been catapulted to almost iconic status because of his famous dissenting opinions in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and other race cases. These earlier studies are neatly complemented by Linda Przybyszewski's thoughtful analysis of the personal experiences and thought patterns that shaped Harlan's work on the Supreme Court. Rather than writing a conventional judicial biography, the author examines the traditions and beliefs that provided the formative intellectual background for Harlan's jurisprudence.

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Przybyszewski traces Harlan's understanding of the law to a cluster of inherited values. His family fostered notions of paternalism that required self-restraint and protection of the weak. A deep religious faith helped to determine his formalistic view of law and influenced his belief that American history was the unfolding of a divine plan. Harlan's strong sense of nationalism, forged in the Civil War, would lead him to urge a broad reading of the Reconstruction amendments. Przybyszewski argues that Harlan's fidelity to these foundational principles could lead to perceived inconsistencies in decisions in particular cases. In so doing, she seeks to dispel the common notion that Harlan was an enigma.

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