Synopses & Reviews
In recent years, black neoconservatism has captured the national imagination. Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court. Stephen Carter's opinions on topics ranging from religion to the confirmation process are widely quoted.
The New Republic has written that black neoconservative Thomas Sowell was having a greater influence on the discussion of matters of race and ethnicity than any other writer of the past ten years.
In this compelling and vividly argued book, Ronald Roberts reveals how this attention has turned an eccentricity into a movement. Black neoconservatives, Roberts believes, have no real constituency but, as was the case with Clarence Thomas, are held upand proclaim themselvesas simply and ruthlessly honest, as above mere self-interest and crude political loyalties. They profess a concern for those they criticize, claiming to possess an objective truth which sets them apart from their critics in the establishment Left. They claim to be outsiders even while sustained by the culture's most powerful institutions. As they level attacks at the activist organizations they perceive as moribund, every significant argument they advance rests on fervent mantras of harsh truths and simple realities.
Enlisting the ideal of impartiality as a partisan weapon, this Tough Love Crowd has elevated the familiar wisdom of Spare the rod and spoil the child to the arena of national politics. Turning to their own writings and proclamations, Roberts here serves up a devastating critique of such figures as Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Stephen Carter, and V. S. Naipaul (Tough Love International). Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd marks the emergence of a provocative and powerful voice on our cultural and political landscape, a voice which holds those who subscribe to this polemically powerful ideology accountable for their opinions and actions.
Review
“This piecemeal research is interesting to the extent that the reader is interested in reconstructing the past.”
“This first-rate work of legal history meets the high expectations of those familiar with James Oldham’s scholarship, and bears those hallmarks of excellence that we associate with that scholarship: total mastery of the manuscript and other sources, lucid exposition, fresh perspective, and sound insight. Illuminating not only the history of the jury, but the contemporary significance and judicial use of that history, this book will be enlightening for the non-specialist, and a boon to the legal historian.”
“Essential reading for anyone interested in trial by jury. Oldham speaks with authority about who the jurors were and what they decided. Surprisingly, he supports a 'complexity exception' to the Seventh Amendment's jury trial guarantee in civil cases. His carefully-documented history of both male and female juries of experts is uniquely valuable. No comparable work exists.”
“An impressive achievement by the leading historian of eighteenth century English law. Meticulously researched and relevant both to historical and modern debates, this book deserves a wide readership.”
“Oldham wonderfully complicates our historical image of the trial jury enshrined in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Early English common law summoned juries of women, foreigners, experts, tradesmen, and neighbors, all deliberately chosen to bring their particular knowledge or experience to court. More than any other scholar, Oldham has revealed the manuscript sources that illuminate the context of English trial practice at the time the Bill of Rights was drafted in the newly-independent United States.”
Review
“An impressive achievement by the leading historian of eighteenth century English law. Meticulously researched and relevant both to historical and modern debates, this book deserves a wide readership.”
-Thomas P. Gallanis,Professor of Law and History, Washington and Lee University
Review
“This piecemeal research is interesting to the extent that the reader is interested in reconstructing the past.”
-The Law and Politics Book Review,
Review
“This first-rate work of legal history meets the high expectations of those familiar with James Oldhams scholarship, and bears those hallmarks of excellence that we associate with that scholarship: total mastery of the manuscript and other sources, lucid exposition, fresh perspective, and sound insight. Illuminating not only the history of the jury, but the contemporary significance and judicial use of that history, this book will be enlightening for the non-specialist, and a boon to the legal historian.”
-Barbara A. Black,George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History, Columbia Law School
Review
“Essential reading for anyone interested in trial by jury. Oldham speaks with authority about who the jurors were and what they decided. Surprisingly, he supports a 'complexity exception' to the Seventh Amendment's jury trial guarantee in civil cases. His carefully-documented history of both male and female juries of experts is uniquely valuable. No comparable work exists.”
-William E. Nelson,Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
Review
“Oldham wonderfully complicates our historical image of the trial jury enshrined in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Early English common law summoned juries of women, foreigners, experts, tradesmen, and neighbors, all deliberately chosen to bring their particular knowledge or experience to court. More than any other scholar, Oldham has revealed the manuscript sources that illuminate the context of English trial practice at the time the Bill of Rights was drafted in the newly-independent United States.”
-David J. Seipp,Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
Review
"In this elegantly written book, Ronald Roberts establishes a lineage for the Tough Love Crowd intellectuals that is both revealing and persuasive. The result is a timely and original contribution to the scholarly debates about critical race theory and to the public debate about black neo-conservatism." -Andrew Ross,Director, American Studies Program, New York University
Review
"Will provoke a lively and vigorous debate among liberals, conservatives, and radicals of many different colors. Roberts is a cultural critic in the tradition of Cornel West, Trey Ellis, Michele Wallace, and bell hooks, with a powerful, passionate, and brash voice." -Angela P. Harris,University of California, Berkeley
Review
"Ronald Roberts is refreshingly brash, brilliantly bold, and creatively intelligent. And he is unmistakably on to something. Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd carefully documents the manner in which the white majority is consistently able to divert the best minds in the minority community to the cause of continued racial oppression, by infiltrating minority conceptions of truth, meaning, and reality. Roberts manages to transcend the stale liberal-conservative debate without falling into the morass of postmodern paralysis. Social observers who pass up this book will be missing a front-row seat to the unfolding epistemological revolution."-Girardeau A. Spann,Georgetown University Law Center
Review
"Timely and original. Roberts is an excellent writer and the lineage he traces for the black Tough Love intellectuals is revealing and persuasive. There is a real need for this book." -Drucilla Cornell,Yeshiva University
Synopsis
While the right to be judged by one's peers in a court of law appears to be a hallmark of American law, protected in civil cases by the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, the civil jury is actually an import from England. Legal historian James Oldham assembles a mix of his signature essays and new work on the history of jury trial, tracing how trial by jury was transplanted to America and preserved in the Constitution.
Trial by Jury begins with a rigorous examination of English civil jury practices in the late eighteenth century, including how judges determined one's right to trial by jury and who composed the jury. Oldham then considers the extensive historical use of a variety of “special juries,” such as juries of merchants for commercial cases and juries of women for claims of pregnancy. Special juries were used for centuries in both English and American law, although they are now considered antithetical to the idea that American juries should be drawn from jury pools that reflect reasonable cross-sections of their communities. An introductory overview addresses the relevance of Anglo-American legal tradition and history in understanding America's modern jury system.
About the Author
Ronald Suresh Roberts, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, is currently on leave from the law firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam and Roberts, working with the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) in Cape Town, South Africa, and to establish the Finance Literary Project at Funda Community College in Soweto, South Africa.