N. E. H. Hull – författare

Few Supreme Court decisions have stirred up as much controversy, vitriolic debate, and even violence as Roe v. Wade in 1973. Four decades later, it remains a touchstone for the culture wars in the United States and a pivot upon which much of our politics turns. With that in mind, N. E. H. Hull and Peter Charles Hoffer have taken stock of the abortion debates, controversies, and cases that have emerged during the past decade in order to update their best-selling book on this landmark case.

As with the first two editions, this book details Roe v. Wade’s historical background; highlights the case’s core issues, essential personalities, and key precedents; tracks the case’s path through the courts; clarifies the jurisprudence behind the Court’s ruling in Roe; assesses the impact of the presidential elections of George W. Bush and Barack Obama along with the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor; and gauges the case’s impact on American society and subsequent challenges to it in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and Gonzales v. Carhart (2007). This third updated edition also adds two completely new chapters covering abortion politics and legal battles in Obama’s second term and Trump’s first term.

The new material covers two important cases in detail: Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016) and June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo (2020). The cases dealt with state laws—Texas and Louisiana, respectively—designed to limit access to abortion by requiring doctors performing abortions to have admission privileges at a state-authorized hospital within thirty miles of the abortion clinic. In both cases the Court ruled the laws unconstitutional, thus handing abortion rights’ activists key victories in the face of an increasingly conservative Court. The new chapters also cover the confirmations of Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh as well as the heated political environment surrounding the Court in the age of Trump.

Just as the polls opened on November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony arrived and filled out her "ticket" for the various candidates. But before it could be placed in the ballot box, a poll watcher objected, claiming her action violated the laws of New York and the state constitution. Anthony vehemently protested that as a citizen of the United States and the state of New York she was entitled to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. The poll watchers gave in and allowed Anthony to deposit her ballots. Anthony was arrested, charged with a federal crime, and tried in court.

Primarily represented within document collections and broader accounts of the fight for woman suffrage, Anthony''s controversial trial—as a landmark narrative in the annals of American law—remains a relatively neglected subject. N. E. H. Hull provides the first book-length engagement with the legal dimensions of that narrative and in the process illuminates the laws, politics, and personalities at the heart of the trial and its outcome.

Hull summarizes the woman suffrage movement in the post-Civil War era, reveals its betrayal by former allies in the abolitionist movement, and describes its fall into disarray. She then chronicles Anthony''s vote, arrest, and preliminary hearings, as well as the legal and public relations maneuvering in the run-up to the trial. She captures the drama created by Anthony, her attorneys, the politically ambitious prosecutor, and presiding judge—and Supreme Court justice—Ward Hunt, who argued emphatically against Anthony''s interpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments as the source of her voting rights. She then tracks further relevant developments in the trial''s aftermath—including Minor v. Happersett, another key case for the voting rights of women—and follows the major players through the eventual passage of the Nineteenth (or "Susan B. Anthony") Amendment.

Hull''s concise and readable guide reveals a story of courage and despair, of sisterhood and rivalry, of high purpose and low politics. It also underscores for all of us how Anthony''s act of civil disobedience remains essential to our understanding of both constitutional and women''s history—and why it all matters.