Customer Reviews

John Marshall Harlan: Great Dissenter of the Warren Court

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Tinsley Yarbrough does a great justice to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan with this work.

Often overlooked and neglected, the second Harlan was actually more accomplished than the first, and may very well be the most astute and distinguished dissenter in the history of the Supreme Court. A man of amazing scholarly achievement and disciplined intellectuality, Harlan was actually a more well rounded and principled judicial figure than many of the more popular activist justices during his time of service.

I am very surprised that this is the first review of this book. Mr. Yarbrough put together a wonderful and sober minded biography of a brilliant figure deserving of a lot more attention than he's been afforded. I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in the Supreme Court and one of the better justices ever to occupy the bench.

As one who has read probably a hundred books on the Supreme Court and it's Justices (perhaps more), I can certainly say this study of Justice John Marshall Harlan "II" is a fine addition to the field, and worth the read if you're looking for a detailed examination of Justice Harlan's life and his approach to judicial work. One caveat is that this book is written in a fairly dry style (some might call it "patrician," perhaps fitting its subject), with many a long, winding, and multi-subject sentence, countless of which conclude with a contrast between "the former" and "the latter" . . . though by the time you get to the end of these trailing sentences, you've forgotten much of what the just-read "latter" is and you need to retrack many lines up the page to recall what the long-forgotten "former" was. Fortunately, Professor Yarbrough's writing style became considerably more accessable between the writing of this book and his more recent biography of Justice David Souter ("David Hackett Souter: Traditional Republican on the Rehnquist Court"). I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to others who are fascinated by the Supreme Court and those who have served on it. However, it is at times a bit of an uphill climb.