Vol. 7 No. 3 (March 1997) pp. 179-180.

NEW DEAL JUSTICE: THE CONSTITUTIONAL JURISPRUDENCE OF HUGO L. BLACK, FELIX FRANKFURTER, AND ROBERT H. JACKSON, by Jeffrey D. Hockett. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996. 322 pages. Paper.

Reviewed by Howard Ball, Political Science, University of Vermont.

NEW DEAL JUSTICE has, as its central focus, an explanation and a comparison of the jurisprudence of three of Roosevelt's major appointments to the Supreme Court: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson. It is a book written, according to the author, about judicial decision-making in the pre- and post-industrial era of American history. It was expanded beyond a study of Justice Jackson because Hockett believes there is "much more to be said about the underpinnings of each man's constitutional jurisprudence" (p. ix) than has been written to-date by scholars.

Hockett's contentions, certainly not earth-shattering ones, are as follows: (1) Political and jurisprudential perceptions are a consequence of the person's reactions to the political, economic, cultural, and regional forces that surrounded him or her during the formative years. (2) The values and attributes of the person, a consequence of the myriad forces present during the formative years, influence his or her political and judicial decisions.

By exploring a person's ideological, regional, and cultural backgrounds, one can explain his or her subsequent judicial behavior and performance as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Given Black's growing up during the Populist period in a hierarchical agrarian Alabama, one understands the later antihierarchial rights views he held as a U.S. Senator and as an Associate Justice. Likewise, understanding Frankfurter's maturation under the influence of Progressivism accounts for his fears of judicial abstraction and his behavior as an Associate Justice. And, of course, one can account for Jackson's judicial pragmatism by examining his growing up in a rural area of New York, without formal college education and with no formal legal training.

That, in sum, is Hockett's focus and his contentions. Furthermore, he maintains that most of those researchers who have studied these three jurists (and their colleagues on their Courts) have somehow failed to understand these cultural/regional/ideological values and their impact on men and women growing up in such a pre- and post-industrial environment (late nineteenth and early twentieth century).

To make his case, Hockett uses the same materials that others have used to understand and then to explain judicial behavior of the men and women who have sat and are sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. That is, the files of the three justices at the Library of Congress, have been the primary sources for his book. He uses them as well as others who have preceded him in this archival work. He has also used, to his advantage, existing secondary sources on the lives of these three jurists. The sources used are the appropriate ones and Hockett optimally exploits them to make his points about the errors of past authors.

NEW DEAL JUSTICE is a well-organized and clearly written attack on the existing literature. Hockett contends that too many scholars have simply misread Black and Frankfurter and have not really taken the time to understand Jackson. I will let readers determine how successful Hockett has been in his effort to provide fresh, new insights into the jurisprudence of Justices Black, Frankfurter, and Jackson.