Reconstructing Reconstruction: The Supreme Court and the Production of Historical Truth PDF
Preview Reconstructing Reconstruction: The Supreme Court and the Production of Historical Truth
Reconstructing Reconstruction RECONSTRUCTING RECONSTRUCTION The Supreme Court and the Production of Historical Truth Pamela Brandwein DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and London 1999 © 1999 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper @) Typeset in Berkeley Medium by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. To my parents, Lisa and Larry Brandwein & Vera and Ben Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 2 Slavery as an Interpretive Issue in the 39th Reconstruction Congress: The Northern Democrats 23 3 Republican Slavery Criticism 42 4 The Supreme Court's Official History 61 5 Dueling Histories: Charles Fairman and William Crosskey Reconstruct "Original Understanding" 96 6 Recipes for ''Acceptable'' History 132 7 History as an Institutional Resource: Warren Court Debates over Legislative Apportionment 155 8 Constitutional Law as a "Culture of Argument": Toward a SOciology of Constitutional Law 185 9 Conclusion 208 Notes 215 Bibliography 257 Index 267 Acknowledgments As a sophomore at the University of Michigan, I took a course on civil liberties. William F. Harris was the teacher and this course set me off on the road that has led to this project. Will is a wonderful and really quite extraordinary teacher and, of course, by no means responsible for the content here. In its previous life this book was my dissertation. There are not many dissertations in SOciology that treat questions about civil rights but Ar thur L. Stinchcombe offered wisdom, comprehensive criticism, and a willingness to read drafts many times over. Art has been influential in the lives and careers of many graduate students, and I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to count myself among them. Art tells me that I make an "odd" sort of sociologist, but I am better at it than I would have been without him as a teacher. The good words he has offered me over the years have uncommon value. Kim Scheppele has been reading and commenting on my work since I was an undergraduate and I have reaped enormous benefits. In addition to pointing me in the direction of Art Stinchcombe, she provided a great deal of support as I pursued a set of questions that took me across dis ciplinary divides. Her criticism has conSistently pushed me to the next level, and for that I am deeply grateful. Robert L. Nelson has offered a friendly and critical eye from the early days of this project. I thank him for his questions and encouragement and for his belief that my work should end up in print. I also want to express my gratitude to Arthur McEvoy. His remarks on dissertation chapters were absolutely precise, cutting sharply and cleanly to core matters. As fortune would have it, earlier versions of several chapters landed
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