Richard C. Cortner – författare

This is the first in-depth analysis of American railroad litigation from the 1880s to 1910 that led to landmark decisions by the Supreme Court, fundamentally altering the meaning of due process in American constitutional law and establishing a basic power of the federal courts to restrict state regulation over railroad rates. This is the first book-length study systematically to explore the impact of American railroads on the courts and the U.S. Constitution. Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars interested in decisions that profoundly affected contemporary views on the Constitution, and the political strategy and tactics used by the railroads to affect the judicial process, will gain new insights from this study.The introduction covers the disastrous defeat that the railroads suffered at the hands of the Supreme Court in the 1877 Granger Cases when the roads first challenged governmental regulation of railroad rates. Chapters 1 through 5 analyze their victories in the 1880s and 1890s as they sought to establish substantive due process as a valid doctrine. Chapters 6 through 9 describe the subsequent litigation to circumvent the Eleventh Amendment's apparent bar to injunction suits against state officers in the federal courts, culminating in a Supreme Court landmark decision of 1908. The epilogue shows how these decisions had a lasting impact on constitutional development in the United States in relation to civil liberties and contemporary constitutional law.

The Kingfish and the Constitution is an in-depth analysis of the poisonous relationship that evolved between Huey Kingfish Long, legendary governor of Louisiana, and the state's daily newspapers. Long's political battle over the newspaper tax in the Louisiana legislature in 1934 and the subsequent battle over the constitutionality of his attempt at censorship by taxation culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grosjean v. American Press Co. in 1936, a landmark decision that laid the basis for the protection of modern freedom of the press in America. This fascinating study will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, constitutional law, and American history.

The struggle for civil rights in America was fought at the lunch counter as well as in the streets. It ultimately found victory in the halls of government - but, as Richard Cortner reveals, only through a creative use of congressional power and critical judicial decisions. Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, and shortly after its passage blacks were refused service at the Heart of Atlanta Motel and at Ollie's Barbecue in Birmingham, Alabama, as a test of the new law by business owners who claimed the right to choose their own customers. These challenges made their way to the Supreme Court, becoming landmark cases frequently cited in law. Until now, however, they have never benefited from book-length analysis. Cortner provides an inside account of the litigation in both decisions to tell how they spelled the end to segregation in the South. The fact that blacks could not travel in the South without assured access to food and lodging led Congress to enforce civil rights on the basis of its authority to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court unanimously sustained Title II's constitutionality under the commerce clause in both test cases, joining the executive and legislative branches in defining the power of the federal government to desegregate society, even by circuitous means. Drawing on justice department files, Supreme Court justices' papers, and records of defense attorneys, Cortner provides the background for the cases, including previous legal battles over sitins. He describes the roles of key players in the litigation - particularly Solicitor General Archibald Cox and members of the Warren Court. In addition, he uses presidential files, oral histories, and other primary sources to give readers a clear picture of the forces at work in the creation, implementation, and validation of the Civil Rights Act. Cortner's thorough account illuminates the nature of constitutional litigation and the judicial process, as well as the role of the Constitution and law, in two decisions that marked the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement and changed the face of America forever.