Rosenberg presents, with remarkable skill, an overwhelming case that efforts to use the courts to generate significant reforms in civil rights, abortion, and women's rights were largely failures.

"The real strength of The Hollow Hope . . . is its resuscitation of American Politics—the old-fashioned representative kind—as a valid instrument of social change. Indeed, the flip side of Mr. Rosenberg's argument that courts don't do all that much is the refreshing view that politics in the best sense of the word—as deliberation and choice over economic and social changes, as well as over moral issues—is still the core of what makes America the great nation it is. . . . A book worth reading."—Gary L. McDowell, The Washington Times

Preface

Introduction

1. The Dynamic and the Constrained Court

Part 1: Civil Rights

Introduction

2. Bound for Glory? Brown and the Civil Rights Revolution

3. Constraints, Conditions, and the Courts

4. Planting the Seeds of Progress?

5. The Current of History

Part 2: Abortion and Women's Rights

Introduction

6. Transforming Women's Lives? The Courts and Abortion

7. Liberating Women? The Courts and Women's Rights

8. The Court as Catalyst?

9. The Tide of History

Part 3: The Environment, Reapportionment, and Criminal Law

Introduction

10. Cleaning House? The Courts, the Environment, and Reapportionment

11. Judicial Revolution? Litigation to Reform the Criminal Law

12. Conclusion: The Fly-Paper Court

Appendices

1. Black Children in Elementary and Secondary School with Whites: 1954-72

2. Blacks at Predominantly White Public Colleges and Universities

3. Black Voter Registration in the Southern States: Pre- and Post-Voting Rights Act

4. Laws and Actions Designed to Preserve Segregation

5. Method for Obtaining Information for Table 4.1 and Figure 4.1

6. Illegal Abortions

7. Method for Obtaining Information for Tables 8.1A, 8.1B, 8.2A, and 8.2B, and for Figures 8.1 and 8.2

Case References

References

Index