Rethinking the Judicial Settlement of Reconstruction

Abstract

In this important and convincing book, Pamela Brandwein challenges the now-traditional view that during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age the U.S. Supreme Court deliberately aided the restoration of white supremacy in the South by interpreting the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in constricted ways. For Brandwein, the oft-told story of Justices Joseph Bradley, Samuel Miller, and other members of the Waite court (1874–1888) purposefully aiding the forces of reaction with their opinions in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Civil Rights Cases (1883), and other decisions is overly simplistic and teleological. She sets out to complicate the “cinematic” narrative found in many textbooks in which “the forces of good (Republicans) are vanquished by the forces of evil (Democrats) and Court justices (with the exception of Justice John Marshall Harlan) are aligned with the latter” (p. 2). Scholars looking for heroes and villains, Brandwein argues, have misunderstood the rulings of the Waite court and conflated its decisions with those of the more racist and reactionary Fuller court (1888–1910) that decided Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).