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Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr Justice Burton and Decision-Making in the Supreme Court, 1945-1958 by Mary Frances Berry Review by: John E. Semoche The American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 588-589 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1855376 . Accessed: 24/06/2014 20:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 20:21:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr Justice Burton and Decision-Making in the Supreme Court, 1945-1958by Mary Frances Berry

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Page 1: Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr Justice Burton and Decision-Making in the Supreme Court, 1945-1958by Mary Frances Berry

Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr Justice Burton and Decision-Making in the SupremeCourt, 1945-1958 by Mary Frances BerryReview by: John E. SemocheThe American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 588-589Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1855376 .

Accessed: 24/06/2014 20:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 20:21:18 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr Justice Burton and Decision-Making in the Supreme Court, 1945-1958by Mary Frances Berry

588 Reviews of Books

(72 pages), "India" (i i8 pages), and "Pakistan" (30 pages). No review could do justice to such a wide-ranging volume.

Throughout the year 1951 and across the wide geographic expanse covered by the volume, the major issue was fear of Chinese Communist ag- gression. It is understandable that in the weeks and months after the massive Chinese intervention in Korea against United Nations forces that Amer- ican diplomats believed it signaled the beginning of Chinese Communist aggression throughout Asia and the Pacific. From India to Indonesia a fear developed of Chinese "volunteers" taking ad- vantage of resentment toward the European colo- nial powers to foment totalitarian government be- hind an attractive facade of nationalism. Thus American policy makers sought both to weigh the consequences of the loss of the region (with its hundreds of millions of people and its varied and vast resources) and to organize combinations of non-Communist governments. The enemy of my enemy is my friend-an old and respected diplo- matic strategy-came to dominate policy. In the haste to embrace the domino theory-that the fall of any one country in the region (we had not yet settled on Vietnam) would cause the entire area to fall to Communism-one lone voice of reason was lost in the confusion. Charles Ogburn, a State Department officer, questioned policy that "con- ceived of prodigious outlays by the United States" and turned the cause of anti-Communism in Asia into an "American cause" (pp. 6-9). Sadly, his attempt to arrive at a more realistic policy largely was ignored. As the months passed, the com- mencing of truce talks in Korea had a somewhat unexpected result. Instead of lessening tensions along China's long periphery, it caused many American officials to fear that troops freed from fighting in Korea would see action as "'volunteers" in South and Southeast Asia.

Despite a few typographical errors-some caught and some not-this volume will help illu- minate our knowledge at a crucial time and place in modern American foreign relations.

CHARLES M. DOBBS

Metropolitan State College

MARY FRANCES BERRY. Stability, Security, and Continu- ity: Mr. justice Burton and Decision-Making in the Supreme Court, 1945-1958. (Contributions in Legal Studies, number i.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1978. Pp. viii, 286. $I7.50.

Harold Hitz Burton, Truman's first appointee to the Supreme Court, maintained a record of how his colleagues voted on petitions for certiorari and

of their views in conference. He preserved this material, along with some intra-Court correspon- dence, and it is this material that provides the rationale for the present volume. Except for an introductory biographical sketch and a short sum- mary chapter, the book traces, term-by-term, Bur- ton's opinions and the cases decided by the Court. Apparently the author's purpose was two-fold: first, to provide a more detailed characterization of thejustice; and, second, through Burton, to give us some insight into the Court from 1945 to I958.

Labeling her subject "the quiet, unassuming model of the competent justice" (p. 234), Mary Frances Berry adds only some detail to the pre- vailing assessment of Burton. Comfortable in working within the boundaries of the status quo, the justice gained the respect of most of his col- leagues and the recent law school graduates who, as clerks, served the Court. During an era of sharply warring personalities, Burton played the role of peacemaker, usually content to avoid the larger issues and decide cases on the narrowest of grounds. In a time of transition he supported the claims of blacks, but his insistence upon preserving the authority of the states left him behind as the Warren court reassessed the nature of the federal system. The image that Burton cultivated was that of a judge who had successfully divorced his per- sonal views from his judicial labors. This image is not penetrated by Berry, though she does acknowl- edge his hostility to the tactics and demands of labor unions and his readiness to defend the insti- tution of the family from attack.

Whatever value one wishes to place on a study of Burton's decision making, this book has more merit, not in its interpretation, which is analyti- cally limited and t-ends to follow well-grooved paths, but in the conference material that it makes available. Although Burton's notes are far less re- vealing than those of Harlan Fiske Stone, they do add new information on the working relationships of the justices. We see the deliberative process at work and are encouraged that personal views can give way during it. We see Douglas wavering on a free speech claim and Frankfurter claiming that the underworked Vinson court was proceeding too hastily. There are no bombshells here, but the details provided illuminate the internal working of the Court.

Although the book suffers from a lack of consis- tently clear writing and an uncertain focus, its useful information is poorly served by the index. Since the material often tells us more about the other justices than about Burton himself, it is un- fortunate that Frankfurter and Black, who figure prominently in the text, are not indexed after the first five pages. The sparse references that follow

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Page 3: Stability, Security, and Continuity: Mr Justice Burton and Decision-Making in the Supreme Court, 1945-1958by Mary Frances Berry

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significant entries seem arbitrarily chosen. Such a misleading index is worse than none at all.

JOHN E. SEMONCHE University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

LYNDA ANN EWEN. Corporate Power and Urban Crisis in Detroit. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1978. Pp. viii, 312. $17.50.

Lynda Ann Ewen offers Corporate Power and Urban Crisis in Detroit as an explicitly "Marxist-Leninist" analysis designed to provide the "working class" with "knowledge to protect its class interests" (p. 292). But since she also seeks to contribute "a disciplined and systematic analysis" (p. v), pres- ents her study through a distinguished university press, and makes much use of work by historians and sociologists, her book calls for scholarly review as well as political debate.

Corporate Power and Urban Crisis makes one contri- bution which many readers will find useful-an extensive study of the corporate and civic positions held by the 421 persons who directed forty-one of the largest industrial, banking, retailing, and util- ity firms which had headquarters in the Detroit area in 1970. In a series of painstakingly gathered, though not always clearly presented, statistics, Ewen discusses patterns of family ownership, in- terlocking directorates, and corporate director rep- resentation on the boards of local cultural, educa- tional, civic, and business organizations.

According to Ewen, these directors and their families, especially those who own stock in the firms they direct, constitute the Detroit region's "ruling class." Dominant at least since the Ameri- can takeover of Detroit in 1796, this class, Ewen asserts, has controlled the region, making certain that profits have remained high, that its members have enjoyed an attractive physical environment, and that labor has remained exploited, impover- ished, weak, and divided along ethnic and racial lines. Black militancy and the energy crisis have recently threatened the ruling class, but it plans, Ewen believes, to respond to these and other prob- lems by introducing fascism. On the basis of this analysis, Ewen calls on the working class to create a "United Front Against Fascism."

In its historical parts no less than in its dis- cussion of the present, Corporate Power and Urban Crisis is exceedingly schematic. Ewen uses several works of the ancestor-glorification genre to develop a "history that indicts the ancestors" (p. 47). But her exclusive reliance on such sources and her neglect of historical scholarship on urban elites severely limit the value of this indictment. Thus

she gives an account of certain long-lived families but not of Detroit's early landowners, merchants, and manufacturers as a group, and she neglects the impact of automobile manufacturing, save for an assertion that "the ruling class incorporates newcomers within its web" (p. 75). She also does not indicate what proportion of the ruling class of 1970 descended from wealthy Detroit families of the past. Her discussion of power is even less satis- factory. While she recognizes that her work "would be greatly strengthened by data on the specific processes by which the ruling class ac- tually influences and controls" civic organizations and corporations (p. 209), she offers little evidence on these points, and still less for her view that the ruling class has long controlled local and state politics. Instead, she presents highly charged in- terpretations of several local policies and events. Her history of labor in Detroit suffers from sjmilar faults.

Though Ewen does not say so, much of her work seems designed to engage the members of Detroit's recent League of Revolutionary Black Workers, described in James A. Geschwender's Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency. But whatever its role in polit- ical debate, Corporate Power and Urban Crisis will convince few readers who do not share its author's interpretation of the "fundamental scientific laws observed and developed by Marx" and "developed and expanded by such men as Lenin, Stalin, Di- mitroff, and Mao Tse-Tung" (p. 7). Marxist read- ers no less than others will be surprised to find so many controversial issues settled by reference to the polemics of the 1930s. Historians of all per- suasions will regret Ewen's decision to substitute schematic assertion for the serious study of the past and the present.

DAVID C. HAMMACK

Princeton University

BRUCE M. STAVE. The Making of Urban History: His- toriography Through Oral History. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. 1 977. Pp. 336. Cloth $15.95, paper $6.95.

When the Journal of Urban History began to appear in 1974, it carried a unique feature: almost every issue featured an extensive interview with a senior urban historian discussing his or her background, development, and work, and assessing recent scholarship. Now Bruce M. Stave, who conducted the interviews, has presented in one volume his conversations with Blake McKelvey, Bayrd Still, Constance McLaughlin Green, Oscar Handlin, Richard Wade, Sam Warner, Stephan Thern- strom, Eric Lampard, and Samuel Hays. As inter-

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 20:21:18 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions