During an especially low moment of the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that "for goodness' sake, you can't be a lawyer if you don't represent banks." Thurgood Marshall's legal career proves otherwise. Juan Williams' magisterial biography of the great civil rights lawyer and first black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (Times Books; 459 pages; $27.50), reminds us that there is a difference between the hair-splitting legalisms that dominate the current headlines and the rule of law that changes history. Marshall never represented a bank. His clients were African Americans deprived of their fundamental rights as citizens. His...
Books: The Grand Marshall
A new biography of the Supreme Court Justice measures his greatness as well as his flaws
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