The Great Dissenter

January 1, 2021

Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan is known primarily for his dissents and particularly his Plessy v. Ferguson assertion that "all citizens are equal before the law," which served as mighty inspiration for future desegregation efforts. Raised alongside an enslaved boy named Robert Harlan, who as a key political leader post-Civil War helped put him in the Supreme Court, Harlan became an outspoken advocate for the rights of Black people. From Politico editor-at-large Canellos; with a 60,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from April 19, 2021
Biographer Canellos (Last Lion) intertwines in this original and eye-opening biography the lives of Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan and his rumored half-brother, Robert Harlan, who was born a slave. Appointed to the court by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 “as a kind of human olive branch to the South,” Kentucky-born Harlan was the lone dissenting voice in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 and Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, decisions that established the legal precedent for enforcing racial discrimination and segregation. Canellos contends that Harlan’s egalitarian impulses were informed by growing up alongside Robert, the rumored son of Harlan’s father and an enslaved woman, who made a fortune in the California Gold Rush and became a political power broker in Cincinnati. The second half of the book examines the cases that defined Harlan’s judicial legacy and their lasting impact on issues ranging from income tax to civil rights; Canellos notes that Harlan’s dissent in Plessy became a touchstone in Thurgood Marshall’s fight to reverse decades of racial discrimination. Written in lively prose and enriched with colorful character sketches and a firm command of the legal issues involved, this is a masterful introduction to two fascinating figures in American history. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Strothman Agency.

May 1, 2021
A thorough biography of the Supreme Court justice who famously said, "our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Canellos, the former executive editor of Politico, delivers the riveting story of a courageous Kentucky lawyer who initiated significant challenges to anti-civil rights measures during an era of ubiquitous bigotry. John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) is remembered especially by his ringing Supreme Court dissents in three disgraceful cases passed by near unanimity: the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, focused on arbitrary discrimination by establishments; Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which established the "separate but equal" doctrine of Jim Crow segregation in public spaces for the next 60 years; and Lochner v. New York, a setback for labor legislation that would become especially troublesome during the New Deal. In 1876, Harlan was appointed to the Supreme Court by the recently elected president, Rutherford Hayes, who desired a Southerner for the post--though the Great Dissenter would prove to be a decidedly "eccentric" Southerner. Harlan grew up in a family that owned slaves, including his half brother, Robert, who built a successful career for himself as a freed man. Canellos shows how Robert, "horse-racing impresario, gold rush entrepreneur, financier of Black-owned businesses, world traveler, state representative, and leading Black citizen in Ohio," had a profound impact on his brother. Despite the fact that the final postwar civil rights amendment had been ratified in 1870, by the time Harlan was appointed, the meaning of all of them was still unclear. Harlan was the lone voice insisting that a "legal revolution had been won on the battlefields of Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Manassas." His dissent "provided the only shred of faith in the system, the only real evidence that America wasn't completely separating along color lines." Given the recent heated debates about Supreme Court justices and civil rights legislation, this expert biography is especially timely and significant. An impressive work of deep research that moves smoothly along biographical as well as legal lines.

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June 1, 2021
Harlan's father so admired Chief Justice John Marshall that he named his son after him, hoping his child would one day follow his namesake onto the Supreme Court. It was a prophecy that would pay off, though first there was a Civil War to fight and then elected offices to pursue and lose. Through it all, John Marshall Harlan steadily built a reputation as a patriot and a man of honor. In this meticulously researched and acutely analytical biography, Canellos offers a nuanced portrait of the Supreme Court justice whose arguments in some of the most consequential cases in American jurisprudence earned him the titular sobriquet, ""The Great Dissenter."" Yet for all his contrarian positions, Harlan, who served from 1877 to 1911, consistently addressed controversial issues with logic, eloquence, humanity, and passion that garnered widespread public support if not that of the administrations under which he served. History will judge Harlan's legal acumen for the impact his opinions eventually had on future generations and the way in which they presaged societal changes his contemporaries could not begin to imagine.

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