Division and discord

Division and Discord offers a comprehensive appraisal of the Supreme Court during the fractious period that bridged the court-packing fight of the Hughes years and the rights explosion of the Warren era. During the dozen years that Melvin I. Urofsky reviews in this volume, the Court ruled on a range of controversial cases, including the internment of the Japanese, the guilt of the Rosenbergs, and the crimes of Nazi saboteurs.

At the same time the judicial body struggled internally to balance the strong wills of some of the most important figures in U.S. judicial history - Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, and Robert M. Jackson.

Urofsky contends that these years play a critical role in modern constitutional history, not merely as a colorful interlude between two better-known eras of Supreme Court history but also as a period that signaled a fundamental upheaval in U.S. jurisprudence - the shift in focus from the protection of private property to the protection of individual liberties.

Urofsky analyzes the cases brought before the Stone and Vinson Courts and underscores the difficulty of the issues faced by the judicial body during this period of war, cold war, economic growth, and social turmoil. Of perhaps even greater significance, he reveals the severity of personality clashes among the justices. He details how Chief Justices Harlan Fiske Stone and Fred M. Vinson proved unable to lead a court divided by four towering personalities.

Urofksy credits Black, Douglas, Frankfurter, and Jackson, rather than Stone or Vinson, with delineating jurisprudential debates of the period.