Exporting American Dreams

Marshall, Kagan, and Martin Luther King

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:01:00 +0000

My post today on CNN.com:

Republican senators this week pressed Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on the degree to which her views mirror those of her mentor Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom Kagan clerked for in 1987-88.

You might have thought Marshall himself was before the Senate. Sen. John Kyl of Arizona opined in his opening statement Monday that Marshall's judicial philosophy "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama concurred, calling the landmark civil rights-lawyer-turned-judge "a well-known activist."

Kagan reminded the senators that if confirmed "you will get Justice Kagan. You won't get Justice Marshall."

There's an irony here. While Kagan and Marshall surely have important differences, there is something they have in common, but it's not what Kagan's Republican questioners have in mind. During confirmation hearings, both were criticized not only for their own ideas, but for those of another.

Continue reading here.

Roundtable on Exporting American Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:56:00 +0000

Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, and the topic of transnational history, are taken up in a roundtable on H-Diplo, the diplomatic history listserv. The roundtable includes an Introduction by Christopher Endy, California State University, Los Angeles, reviews by Daniel Branch, University of Warwick, Cary Fraser, Pennsylvania State University, and George White, Jr., York College-CUNY, and a response from me.

Book panels at Law & Society Association meeting

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:26:00 +0000

There will be a panel discussion on Exporting American Dreams at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, in Denver, Colorado, on Friday, May 29 - 2:30pm - 4:15pm. Here are the details:

Author Meets Reader--Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, by Mary Dudziak
Session Participants: Chair: Taunya Banks (University of Maryland)
Author: Mary Dudziak (University of Southern California)
Reader: H. Kwasi Prempeh (Seton Hall University)
Reader: Henry J. Richardson (Temple University)

Abstract:In Exporting American Dreams, Mary Dudziak recounts with poignancy and power the untold story of Marshall's journey to Africa. African Americans were enslaved when the U.S. constitution was written. In Kenya, Marshall could become something that had not existed in his own country: a black man helping to found a nation. He became friends with Kenyan leaders Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta, serving as advisor to the Kenyans, who needed to demonstrate to Great Britain and to the world that they would treat minority races (whites and Asians) fairly once Africans took power. He crafted a bill of rights, aiding constitutional negotiations that helped enable peaceful regime change, rather than violent resistance.

Other book panels of interest include:

Fri, May 29 - 10:15am - 12:00pm
Author Meets Reader--The Origins of African-American Interests in International Law, by Henry Richardson
Session Participants:
Chair: Penelope Andrews (Valparaiso University)
Author: Henry J. Richardson (Temple University)
Reader: Maxwell O. Chibundu (University of Maryland)
Reader: Ruth Gordon (Villanova University)
Reader: Jeremy Telman (Valparaiso University)
Reader: Jeremy Levitt (Florida A & M University)

Abstract:This book explores the birth of the African-American international tradition and, particularly, the roots of African Americans’ stake in international law. Richardson considers these origins as only formally arising about 1619, the date the first Africans were landed at Jamestown in the British North American colony of Virginia. He looks back to the opening of the European slave trade out of Africa and to the 1500s and the first arrival of Africans on the North American continent. Moving through the pre-Independence period, the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the Westward Migration, the book ends around 1820.

Sat, May 30 - 4:30pm - 6:15pm
Author Meets Reader--Constitutional Rights in Two Worlds: South Africa and the United States, by Mark Kende
Session Participants:
Chair: Peter Yu (Drake University)
Author: Mark Kende (Drake University)
Reader: Penelope Andrews (Valparaiso University)
Reader: Taunya Banks (University of Maryland)
Reader: Miguel Schor (Suffok University)

Abstract: The South African Constitutional Court has issued internationally prominent decisions abolishing the death penalty, enforcing socio-economic rights, allowing gay marriage, and promoting equality. By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court has generally ruled more conservatively on similar questions. This book examines the Constitutional Court in detail to determine how it has functioned during South Africa's transition and compares its ruling to those of the U.S. Supreme Court on similar rights issues. The book also analyzes the scholarly debate taking place in South Africa about the Constitutional Court. It furthermore addresses the arguments of those international scholars who have suggested that constitutional courts do not bring about social change. In the end, the book highlights a transformative pragmatic method of constitutional interpretation, a method the U.S. Supreme Court could employ. This Author meets Readers panel will consist of scholars who discuss, critique, and expand on the book's themes.

Albany, April 24: Finding the World in Civil Rights History

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:27:00 +0000

I'm giving a lecture to the Phi Alpha Theta honorees, History Department, University at Albany, on Friday, April 24. My topic: Finding the World in Civil Rights History.

Hofstra, Wednesday, April 15

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:29:00 +0000

I am speaking on Thurgood Marshall's Global Impact at Hofstra Law School, this Wednesday, April 15, at 11:00 a.m.

Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement, this weekend at UNC

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:44:00 +0000

The Long Civil Rights Movement: Histories, Politics, Memories is a conference to be held April 3-4 at the University of North Carolina. It is organized by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, and is part of a broader program at UNC, Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement. My talk, based on Exporting American Dreams, is "Thurgood Marshall Encounters ‘The True Sons of Africa’: Legal Rights and Wrongs at Kenya’s Independence."

The conference is, unfortunately, full and cannot accommodate more registrants. However the keynote address is open to anyone:

“Jim Crow’s Last Stand: The Unfinished Struggle for Educational Equality”
Keynote address by Thomas J. Sugrue.

Introduced by Julius Chambers.

Friday, April 3, 7:30 pm

Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

Details are here.

Robert S. Marx Lecture, Univ. of Cincinnati, March 10

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:46:00 +0000

I will deliver the 2009 Robert S. Marx Lecture at the University of Cincinnati College of Law on March 10. My topic: Thurgood Marshall's Global Impact, taking up the international impact of Marshall's most important case, Brown v. Board of Education, as well as his work on behalf of African American soldiers in Korea, and with nationalists in Kenya. Details are here.

Journal of Transnational American Studies

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:50:00 +0000

The on-line Journal of Transnational American Studies has just been launched. In a "Forward" section, the journal previews new transnational scholarship. An excerpt from Exporting American Dreams is included in the first issue. Forward editor Greg Robinson writes:

The “Forward” section of the Journal of Transnational American Studies is designed as a special “sneak preview”: it offers readers a chance for a first look at excerpts of newly published or forthcoming works that feature transnational work in American studies. This way we can offer cutting‐edge scholarship online, in such a way that the new work can itself circle the globe. It is marvelously exciting to be able to present in our debut issue three outstanding examples of research in transnational American studies: Gordon H. Chang’s introductory analysis of Asian American art from Asian American Art: A History, 1850–1970; Mary L. Dudziak’s narrative of civil rights legend Thurgood Marshall’s contribution to nation‐building in Kenya from Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey; and Micol Seigel’s analysis of internationalism and African American performance (and performativity) from Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States.

Read the full first issue here. The excerpt from Exporting American Dreams is here.

M'Baye reviews Exporting American Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:17:00 +0000

Babacar M'Baye, Department of English and Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, reviews Exporting American Dreams for H-Law. M'Baye writes:

Mary L. Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams successfully explores the relations between Thurgood Marshall and Africa through the prism of African American connections with Africa during the twentieth century. The book also examines the ironic and complicated status of African Americans who experienced the inequalities, frustration, and poverty that institutionalized segregation and racism had fostered in the United States during the 1950s.

M'Baye sets the book in the context of a broader literature:

Exporting American Dreams participates in a promising scholarship on African American relationships with Africa, joining such works as Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993),Tunde Adeleke's UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (1998), John Cullen Gruesser's Black on Black: Twentieth-Century African American Writing about Africa (2000), Brent Hayes Edwards's The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (2003), and [James] Campbell's Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 (2006). These works have expanded the promising field of black Atlantic studies by examining the relations between black literary and political figures in the United States and Africa within interdisciplinary frameworks.

M'Baye concludes that

the book suggests the fleeting nature of democratic ideals in the mid-twentieth century, the exportation of which was easily spoiled when they became a fleeting illusion, rather than a feasible dream, in the lives of African Americans in the United States.

Read the rest here.

Book talk at Boston College, February 4

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:30:00 +0000

I will discuss Exporting American Dreams in the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy lecture series at Boston College, on Wednesday, February 4, at 4:30 p.m., McGuinn Hall, Third Floor Lounge (no link to the event itself currently available -- sorry).

Book(s) event January 22

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:38:00 +0000

I will be speaking about both Exporting American Dreams and Cold War Civil Rights at a workshop for K-12 teachers in Vancouver, Washington on Thursday, January 22. All the details and readings are here.

This event is part of an on-going series on Causes of Conflict, funded by a Teaching American History Grant. My own participation is part of the Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Lecturer series.

Meriwhether on Black Voters, Africa, and the 1960 Presidential Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:22:00 +0000

“Worth a Lot of Negro Votes”: Black Voters, Africa, and the 1960 Presidential Campaign by James H. Meriwether, has just been published in the Journal of American History. I read this article in draft, and recommend it highly. The article is accompanied by an on-line supplement on Teaching the JAH. Here's a brief article description:

When John F. Kennedy telephoned Coretta Scott King to express sympathy for her jailed husband, he had little idea that his two-minute call would move to center stage in the 1960 presidential election. That call, James H. Meriwether argues, has obscured Kennedy’s broader efforts to secure the support of black voters while not alienating white voters in the no longer “solid South.” Kennedy drew on the growing transnational relationship black Americans had with an ancestral continent undergoing its own freedom struggles, revealing that he was more interested in Africa than in civil rights. Africa, the newest frontier for Kennedy, became a place where he could show his Cold War credentials, find common ground with black American voters, and strengthen his chances to win the presidency.

The fabulous teaching supplement includes a podcast of an interview with Meriwether, teaching exercises listed below, links to primary sources, and a bibliography of further readings.

Among the primary sources is an excerpt from the Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae in Brown v. Board of Education, which argued that school segregation harmed U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War. I believe this is the first time this source has been available open-access on-line.

Overall, these sources make it quite easy to bring transnational history into teaching the history of civil rights during the Cold War and 20th century U.S. politics.

Exercise 1: Race and the Cold War
Exercise 2: The United States and Colonialism in Africa
Exercise 3: African Americans and Africa
Exercise 4: Hearts, Minds, and Student Exchanges
Exercise 5: Politics of Race

Cross-posted from the Legal History Blog.

Recommended books

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:24:00 +0000

Exporting American Dreams gets a nice plug from Beatrice Lewin Dumin, UCLA Law Library. In the course of highlighting A Guide to the Birds of East Africa and The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood, she says of Exporting American Dreams:

My comments are simple: It's a very accessible presentation of the fascinating link between the American Civil Rights Movement and, in particular, the birth of an independent Kenya; a link that has contemporary brilliance in the person of President-elect Barack Obama. What makes me think of this book in relation to A Guide to the Birds of East Africa is that Dudziak writes about the various tribal and racial (ethnic and cultural) tensions within Kenya, which included the precarious position that the Asian community faced as the interplay between colonial and native erupted. Our protagonist, Mr. Malik, is just such a fellow, a Kenyan of Indian descent.

Dumin's evocative reviews of Nicholas Drayson's and Helen Cooper's books are here.

Program for K-12 Teachers in Washington State

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:27:00 +0000

I'm doing a workshop on two books, Exporting American Dreams, and my first book Cold War Civil Rights, for K-12 teachers in Vancouver, Washington, January 22. Details are here. Future updates and course materials can be found here.

This event was arranged through the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer program. The honorarium from the event will go to support the OAH.

$16.47

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:58:00 +0000

The cost of Exporting American Dreams on Amazon.com went up, but has come back down in time for your holiday shopping. It is again priced at a 34% discount, $16.47. You can also find the book at Oxford University Press and elsewhere, and in a Kindle edition.

Book talk at USC, Wednesday, Dec. 10

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:29:00 +0000

My next book event is Wednesday, December 10, at the University of Southern California Law School, from 12:00 noon to 1:20 p.m. in the Faculty Lounge (rm 433). Directions are here. Here's the announcement:

Exporting American Dreams tells the story of Thurgood Marshall's journey to Africa, a journey which began in 1960 when Kenyan independence leaders asked him to help write their constitution. In Kenya, Marshall could become something he could not be in his own country: a black man helping to found a nation. He became friends with Kenyan leaders Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta, serving as advisor to the Kenyans, who needed to demonstrate to Great Britain and to the world that they would treat minority races (whites and Asians) fairly once Africans took power. He crafted a bill of rights, aiding constitutional negotiations that helped enable peaceful regime change, rather than violent resistance. Exporting American Dreams traces the movement of Kenyan history from the boundless possibility and hope of independence to the rise to power of the repressive regime of Daniel arap Moi, and connects that story to the movement American path from civil rights reform to the national institutional and cultural rejection of racial transformation. The stories parallel each other in their tragic arcs, particularly in the assassinations of movement visionaries Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of a Memphis hotel in 1968 and Tom Mboya on the streets of Nairobi in 1969. Professor Dudziak puts the stories into dialogue with each other through the person of Thurgood Marshall, who bridged historic events in both nations through his own struggles to facilitate the triumph of the rule of law and the ideal of democratic governance with guarantees for full participation and protection of minority rights.

Mary Dudziak is the Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at USC. She received her A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her J.D., M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Prior to joining USC Law School in 1998, she was a law clerk for Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a professor of law and history at the University of Iowa. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History and the Law and Society Association’s program committee. She also serves as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and has been a member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

In addition to Exporting American Dreams, Professor Dudziak is the author of Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000); editor of September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003); and co-editor (with Leti Volpp) of Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders, a special issue of American Quarterly (September 2005), reissued by Johns Hopkins University Press in March 2006. Her articles on civil rights history and 20th-century constitutional history have appeared in numerous law reviews and other journals. Her current projects include How War Made America: A 20th Century History, under contract with Oxford University Press. She founded the Legal History Blog and contributes to Balkinization.

Book event at the Warren Center, December 1

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:15:00 +0000

I will discuss Exporting American Dreams at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, in conjunction with their year-long seminar on Race-Making and Law-Making in the Long Civil Rights Movement, Monday, December 1, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. The location is the History Library, 1st floor, Robinson Hall, Harvard University.

American Lawyer Review

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:22:00 +0000

Exporting American Dreams was reviewed in the American Lawyer, October 2008. Claire Duffett writes:

Dudziak effectively assesses Marshall's strengths and weaknesses, as he toggled between helpful advocate and meddling American. When Kenya's government failed to uphold certain rights, Marshall's temper flared. To the country's first president, he shouted at a cocktail party: "I spent all my time busting tail in that wet place in London writing a constitution for you with a bill of rights. . . . Don't go around taking people's property without due process of law!" Marshall also once leaped onto a station wagon to deliver a rousing speech on a street in Nairobi. Dudziak peppers the book with such instances of Marshall's zeal, which helped him achieve some of the greatest civil rights victories of the twentieth century.

The rest is here.

Book discussion this Friday in Berkeley

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:03:00 +0000

I'm discussing Exporting American Dreams at the Institute for Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, on Friday, November 21.

Exporting American Dreams is Green Bag nominee for exemplary legal writing

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:46:00 +0000

Every year the legal literary journal Green Bag honors exemplary legal writing. Books, articles and judicial opinions are among the works considered. This year, Exporting American Dreams is a nominee. Winners will be announced in December.

Book Talk October 22 in Nashville

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:19:00 +0000

I will be speaking about Exporting American Dreams at 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 22 at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Symposium on Thurgood Marshall, Oct. 24 at Howard University

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Howard Law School is hosting a symposium, Thurgood Marshall: His Life, His Work, His Legacy on Friday, October 24, 2008. Here are the details:

Fifth Annual Wiley A. Branton Symposium

Thurgood Marshall: His Life, His Work, His Legacy

luncheon keynote speaker:
Sheryll D. Cashin
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center and former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall

confirmed former law clerks:
Susan Low Bloch, Dan M. Kahan, Stephen L. Carter, Jordan M. Steiker, Elizabeth Garrett, Carol Steiker, and Mark Tushnet

Friday, October 24, 2008
Moot Court Room
8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Howard University School of Law
2900 Van Ness Street, NW
Washington, DC 20008

The program is here (pdf).

For additional information about the fifth annual Wiley A. Branton/Howard Law Journal Symposium, please contact Jacqueline Young at jyoung@law.howard.edu.

Sponsored by Howard University School of Law and Sidley Austin LLP.

Julie Novkov reviews Exporting American Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:31:00 +0000

Exp orting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, is taken up by Julie N ovkov, University at Albany, SUNY, in a beautifully written review in the Law & Politics Book Review that will cause readers to want to rush immediately to read Novkov's thoughtful body of work. Novkov is a leading law and courts scholar. Her latest book is noted here.

Novkov notes that Exporting American Dreams

connects two stories – the American path from civil rights reform to the national institutional and cultural rejection of racial transformation and the Kenyan path from the boundless possibility and hope of independence to the rise to power of the repressive regime of Daniel arap Moi. The stories parallel each other loosely through their tragic arcs, particularly in the assassinations of movement visionaries Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of a Memphis hotel in 1968 and Tom Mboya on the streets of Nairobi in 1969. But Dudziak puts the stories into dialogue with each other through the person of Thurgood Marshall, who bridged historic events in both nations through his own struggles to facilitate the triumph of the rule of law and the ideal of democratic governance with guarantees for full participation and protection of minority rights....
The [book's] true genius...is in using Marshall as both a concrete and conceptual link between the two movements. Focusing on Marshall enables Dudziak to make two sterling contributions. First, Dudziak thoughtfully addresses Marshall’s position as a symbol not only of black civil rights advancement but also as the embodiment of the American civic commitment to democracy. This analysis links American racial politics with American foreign policy at the core and opens a swath of subsidiary questions for research about how American racial policies shaped, responded to, and ultimately became integrated with American Cold War politics internally and internationally. Second, the selection of Marshall as the central figure raises painful but necessary questions about the rule of law and its capacity to foster and protect justice. Marshall confronted Black Power’s challenge to the state and its theorists’ identification of rule of law as a mere mask for racialized and politicized power relations. Yet he simultaneously closed his eyes to the Kenyan state’s conscious choice to embrace power at the expense of the rule of law and went so far as to praise Kenyatta’s continued fidelity to rights in the face of concrete repression. Does critical race theory’s analysis of law as a tool for reconfiguring power relations coupled with its pessimism about the possibilities for ever achieving racial justice provide a better framework? Or is it necessary, as Mari Matsuda once wrote (1992), to hold the view that the law is the fundamental source of both the most deeply rooted and ineradicable unjust hierarchies of power and our only realistic hope for transformation? [*866]
EXPORTING AMERICAN DREAMS is a thought provoking and painstakingly researched journey through a crucial transformational moment in two nations’ histories. In reflecting closely on Thurgood Marshall’s triumphs and failures in both nations and with both movements, we are invited to reflect on the potentials and core limits on liberalism, democracy, and law as paths to transformation and justice. The invitation seems particularly apt in an era when the United States is once again confronting its own legacy of racial subordination and grappling with questions around nation building and external threat. It is hard at the end of the book not to be frustrated on Marshall’s behalf as well as with Marshall himself. But it is much harder to know who among the contemporary American political and judicial elite might play a role similar to Marshall’s in struggling fiercely to integrate a commitment to the rule of law, to American ideals of liberty and equality, and to the dream of dismantling unjust hierarchies here and abroad.

The full review is here. You can read the Introduction to Exporting American Dreams here.

Oct. 7 in Baltimore: Thurgood Marshall's Global Impact

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:43:00 +0000

I will be speaking on Tuesday, October 7, at the University of Maryland School of Law on Thurgood Marshall's Global Impact. The talk will be at 5:00 p.m. Details are here.

This talk will set the story of Thurgood Marshall in Kenya in a broader context, including the global impact of Marshall's most important case as a civil rights lawyer, Brown v. Board of Education.

On Mark Tushnet on Thurgood Marshall

noreply@blogger.com (Mary L. Dudziak) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:18:00 +0000

My new essay, Mark Tushnet's Thurgood Marshall and the Rule of Law, is now posted on the Social Science Research Network. The essay appeared in a symposium issue of the Quinnipiac Law Review (2008) on the work of Mark Tushnet. Here's the abstract:

This essay, written for a symposium issue of the Quinnipiac Law Review on the work of Mark Tushnet, takes up Tushnet's writings on Thurgood Marshall. Tushnet's body of scholarship on Marshall includes two books, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961, and Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961-1991; an edited collection: Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences; and many articles and essays. Tushnet follows Marshall from his early career as a civil rights lawyer through his service on the United States Supreme Court, focusing more than other biographers on Thurgood Marshall as a lawyer, and paying particular attention to Marshall's conception of the rule of law.

The essay explores Marshall's understanding of the rule of law, bringing in the example of Marshall's confrontation with Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, in 1963, and the tension between Marshall's embrace of Kenya's new leaders, with whom he worked on Kenya's independence constitution, and his concern about their failure to protect the rights of Kenya's Asian minority. In this episode, the rule of law appears as more than fairness and consistent application of legal principles, but also as a form of politics. This ties Marshall's work in Africa in with the conception of law in Tushnet's broader body of work.