Inherently Unequal - Lawrence Goldstone

The descent of the United States into enforced segregation, into a nation where human beings could be tortured and horribly murdered without trial, is a story profoundly tragic and profoundly American. And the Supreme Court was a central player in the tale.

If the Court's complicity in the subversion of equal rights had been due to rogue justices, or was an aberration of jurisprudence, Americans of the current day might merely shake their heads, deplore a shameful episode in their history, and congratulate themselves that the United States was no longer that nation. If, however, the Court's actions were not aberrant at all, but simply examples of ongoing practice, in which justices subordinate the role that Hamilton espoused for them to the exigencies of popular politics--or worse, their own personal beliefs and prejudices--the equal rights decisions of the latter decades of the nineteenth century become expressions of issues deeper, more disturbing. For then the United States Supreme Court would have, in a very real sense, eschewed the dispassion that the Founders thought so vital and become merely a third political arm of government.

Subtitled "The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court 1865-1903" is an excellent historical account of disturbing action and non-action by our highest court. Containing a lot of legal analysis, the book is compelling and hard to put down. I was attracted to the book by actions of the current court and found the similarities I suspected, personal politics taking precedence over sound legal decisions. The author is quite a scholar and presents historical insights into both the Supreme Court and America's rejection of equal rights for all its citizens.