A thorough introduction to the laws of war, the savagery of war crimes, and the international system that demands justice. How do you speak of the unspeakable and defend the indefensible? War Crimes and Justice: A Reference Handbook thoroughly examines the laws of war and how the world community handles the monstrous brutalities of war through the international justice system. Highlighted are 20th century war crimes and trials including Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and the Kerry incident in Vietnam. Also covered are the four international tribunals established to punish violators in Nuremberg, Tokyo, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Howard Ball discusses those who committed unspeakable acts during war, others who sought justice for victims, and case studies portraying both victims and perpetrators. Significant treaties and conventions are explored, as well as all the options available to nations emerging from the throes of bloody civil wars to ensure peace with justice. Includes coverage of key people and trials including World War II, Vietnam, and the recent war in Kosovo Provides speeches, reports, and edited trial transcripts from cases involving war crimes

"Choice" Outstanding Academic Title 2003

.,."A thorough summary of the trajectory of current case law on the legal regulation of U.S. citizens' intimate lives. . . . A valuable introduction to increasingly important and salient legal questions about the constitutional limits on the state's ability to shape intimate lives in the United States."
--" Political Science Quarterly"

.,."A worthy assessment of the law of intimate association and personal decision-making. For those intrigued by the Court's human side, Ball provides a sufficient glimpse without raising the curtain on its realm of privacy that the justices have strived to protect.
-- "Trial"

"Despite the controversial content of many of the cases, Mr. Ball maintains an air of bemused detachment and does not openly take sides. This is not a polemic. With few exceptions, the prevailing tone is light and scholarly. The goal is to illuminate, not to persuade."
--"New York Law Journal"

"In this truly fascinating and spellbinding work, Ball tells many tales."
-- "Choice"

Personal rights, such as the right to procreate--or not--and the right to die generate endless debate. This book maps out the legal, political, and ethical issues swirling around personal rights. Howard Ball shows how the Supreme Court has grappled with the right to reproduce and to abort, and takes on the issue of auto-euthanasia and assisted suicide, from Karen Ann Quinlan through Kevorkian and just recently to the Florida case of the woman who was paralyzed by a gunshot from her mother and who had the plug pulled on herself.

For the last half of the twentieth century, the justices of the Supreme Court have had to wrestle with newand difficult life and death questions for them as well as for doctors and their patients, medical ethicists, sociologists, medical practitioners, clergy, philosophers, law makers, and judges. The Supreme Court in the Intimate Lives of Americans offers a look at these issues as they emerged and examines the manner in which the men and women of the U.S. Supreme Court addressed them.

For the first time, the sad story of America's uranium miners and the duplicity of our government is revealed. This expert study examines, in microcosm, the political, legal, social, medical, engineering, and ethical problems that emerged when American leaders developed a nuclear arsenal to contain the Soviet Union without considering the cost this could have on innocent lives. Medical and public health personnel, policymakers and political scientists, lawyers and legal historians, and citizen watchdogs will find this account illuminating. Ball provides the context in the 1940s and 1950s for understanding the Communist hysteria that swept the country and led policymakers to develop risky nuclear technology and to engage in uranium mining and production while assuring Navajo and Mormon miners of their safety. The study analyzes the medical consequences and the etiology of cancer among miners, the politics behind radioactive policy, the miners' long legal battles, and compensatory legislation in 1990. An appendix provides a federal report about three decades of radiation experiences on U.S. citizens. A bibliography points to primary and secondary source material of note.

In June of 1972, the Democratic National Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., was the site of one of the most famous burglaries in U.S. history. The abortive Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up is reexamined in this book from the unique perspective of the Supreme Court judges, who grappled with its political and legal ramifications. Howard Ball presents the litigation in the U.S. vs. Nixon case from the inside out, analyzing the constitutional issues that faced the court and the way in which the justices worked to resolve conflicts, overcome obstacles, and arrive at an institutional opinion. In recounting the tragedy of Watergate from the viewpoint of the judges, the book makes use of a number of important original sources, including interviews and letters from the justices. Perhaps most important in telling this story, though, are the conference notes and docket sheets of the Court members, especially those of Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., and William O. Douglas. To set the Watergate tapes litigation against the proper background, Ball also examines the role of the federal judiciary in the political system, the crucial concept of judicial review, and the Supreme Court's processes and personnel at the time of the litigation. A selected bibliography and comprehensive index conclude the work. As a unique chronicle of the Watergate scandal, this book will be a valuable resource for courses in American history, legal studies, and the Supreme Court, as well as a significant addition to academic, legal, and public libraries.

The USA Patriot Act: A Reference Handbook is an in-depth examination of the difficult wartime task of balancing civil liberties against national security. Can the government make your library turn over a list of books you've checked out and websites you've visited? Can FBI agents search your home without telling you they've been there? Under normal circumstances, the answer is a resounding no. In today's world, constitutional guarantees are not so firm. Within weeks of the September 11 terrorist attacks, overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress passed the USA Patriot Act. The act immediately aroused bitter controversy. Some claim it impermissibly infringes on constitutional rights; others argue it is a necessary tool to ensure the security of the American homeland. Distinguished scholar and prolific author Howard Ball provides the background necessary for a reasoned, historical examination of both positions. He details the threats to America in the last 60 years, emphasizing terrorist acts; examines the temporary surrender of civil rights during past American wars; and uses that history to analyze the USA Patriot Act, both as it exists and as arguments rage over whether t

The fundamental issue in the controversy over White House efforts to assume more complete control over the federal regulatory bureaucracy is that of administrative accountability in a democratic political system. This work examines the nature and consequences of the shift from political to administrative policy making, with illustrations from the records of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. Ball concludes that all four presidents, despite stylistic differences, viewed regulatory control problems in strikingly similar terms, attempting to oversee federal agency activity through personnel control, deregulation, reorganization efforts, and centralized review.

A legal scholar details the creation and function of the Homeland Security Department, placing it in historical context. In response to the brutal attack of September 11, 2001, the administration created the Department of Homeland Security. Some question whether the powers granted the department are too broad and dangerously curtail civil liberties. What is the department, and how does it compare to historical responses to internal and external threats? A concept so important, it is among the first words of the U.S. Constitution, the defense of our borders is as essential today as it was 230 years ago. administration sponsored the USA Patriot Act and created the Department of Homeland Security. Critics of those actions claim these measures give too much power to the government and impermissibly impinge on civil liberties; supporters claim they are necessary for national security. From the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts to the present, the government has aggressively discharged its duty to ensure domestic tranquility, including jailing dissidents and forcing Japanese citizens into internment camps. In this book, a leading legal scholar explains in detail the present federal actions and places them in historical context.

The slaying of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964 was a notorious event documented in Howard Ball's 2004 book Murder in Mississippi. Now Ball revisits that grisly crime to tell how, four decades later, justice finally came to Philadelphia.

Originally tried in 1967, Baptist minister and Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was set free because one juror couldn't bring herself to convict a preacher. Now Ball tells how progressive-minded state officials finally re-opened the case and, forty years after the fact, enabled Mississippians to reconcile with their tragic past.

The second trial of 80-year-old "Preacher" Killen, who was convicted by a unanimous jury, took place in June 2005, with the verdict delivered on the forty-first anniversary of the crime. Ball, himself a former civil rights activist, attended the trial and interviewed most of the participants, as well as local citizens and journalists covering the proceedings.

Ball retraces the cycle of events that led to the resurrection of this "cold case," from the attention generated by the film Mississippi Burning to a new state attorney general's quest for closure. He reviews the strategies of the prosecution and defense and examines the evidence introduced at the trial-as well as evidence that could not be presented-and also relates first-hand accounts of the proceedings, including his unnerving staring contest with Killen himself from only ten feet away.

Ball explores the legal, social, political, and pseudo-religious roots of the crime, including the culture of impunity that shielded from prosecution whites who killed blacks or "outside agitators." He also assesses the transformation in Mississippi's life and politics that allowed such a case to be tried after so long. Indeed, the trial itself was a major catalytic force for change in Mississippi, enabling Mississippians to convey a much more positive national image for their state.

Ball's gripping account illuminates all of this and shows that, despite racism's long stranglehold on the Deep South, redemption is not beyond the grasp of those who envision a more just society.

This book provides both an overview of the core dilemma in America--racism and the deadly impact it has had on American society--and an account of the ways in which the book's contributors have attempted to deal with this dilemma in their own teaching practice.
Two core essays explore the theoretical and historical issues involved in defining "races" and "ethnic groups" in the West, and issues of racial and ethnic inequality in American society. The volume then examines a variety of strategies for "teaching the conflicts" in comparative literature and politics; African American literature; law, history, and political science; sociology; religion; economics; anthropology; and art and music.
A premise of this book is that multicultural education in colleges and universities must be transdisciplinary--based on the perspectives offered by a multiplicity of interrelated disciplines. Clearly, scholars across the disciplines have a great deal to learn from one another about issues of race and ethnicity in American society. This book shares such knowledge in order to provide relevant, accurate information about these issues and their consequences for individuals living in America. It also encourages university educators to understand the challenges we face as a society and to be idealistic enough to want to draw upon the various strengths of our culture to assist in the remaking of American democracy.

This book provides both an overview of the core dilemma in America--racism and the deadly impact it has had on American society--and an account of the ways in which the book's contributors have attempted to deal with this dilemma in their own teaching practice.
Two core essays explore the theoretical and historical issues involved in defining "races" and "ethnic groups" in the West, and issues of racial and ethnic inequality in American society. The volume then examines a variety of strategies for "teaching the conflicts" in comparative literature and politics; African American literature; law, history, and political science; sociology; religion; economics; anthropology; and art and music.
A premise of this book is that multicultural education in colleges and universities must be transdisciplinary--based on the perspectives offered by a multiplicity of interrelated disciplines. Clearly, scholars across the disciplines have a great deal to learn from one another about issues of race and ethnicity in American society. This book shares such knowledge in order to provide relevant, accurate information about these issues and their consequences for individuals living in America. It also encourages university educators to understand the challenges we face as a society and to be idealistic enough to want to draw upon the various strengths of our culture to assist in the remaking of American democracy.

The infamous detainees of Guantnamo, garbed in their bright orange prison jumpsuits, have come to symbolize a host of controversial policies and powers claimed by President George W. Bush in the so-called war on terror. Designated as "enemy combatants," a vaguely defined and previously unrecognized category in the international laws of war, they have been at the center of a legal firestorm challenging the Bush administration's conduct of the war.

Howard Ball, one of our nation's leading constitutional authorities, takes a close look at the White House's defense of its detainee program (what some have called an "American gulag"), the court actions used to challenge that enormous expansion of unchecked presidential power, and the potential threats to American democracy should those actions ultimately fail. Focusing on the Enemy Combatants Cases of 2004 and 2006-including Rasul v. Bush, Hamdi v. Bush, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld-Ball examines competing legal arguments pitting the detainees' fundamental human rights (including habeas corpus) against Bush's proclamation that he alone has the authority to decide their fate, as well as efforts by the Court and Congress to reclaim their own authority in such matters.

Ball describes how the administration repeatedly found ways to evade both the letter and spirit of the Court's decisions through new legislation, presidential signing statements, and even redefinition of the status of the detainees. He also examines the official context of the cases--including the two Congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, the "Patriot Act," and the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program--as well as other factors such as presidential claims to "state secrets privilege," the torture controversy, and the impact of the 2006 elections.

Ball's trenchant commentary reminds us once again that, in a time of war, there will always be a great tension between the need for security and the constitutional protection of due process for all persons within the nation's jurisdiction. In assessing the Bush administration's actions, his study underscores the significant extent to which they have diminished those protections. Ultimately, it tells a troubling story about the relationship between absolute presidential power and the principles of representative government, one that thoughtful readers cannot afford to ignore.

Few episodes in the modern civil rights movement were more galvanizing or more memorialized than the brutal murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney--idealists eager to protect and promote the rights of black Americans, even in the deep and very dangerous South. In films like Mississippi Burning and popular folk songs, these young men have been venerated as martyrs. Even so, the landmark legal dimensions of their murder case have until now remained largely lost.

Howard Ball reminds us just how problematic the prosecution of the murderers-all members of the KKK-actually was. When the State of Mississippi failed to indict them, the U.S. tried to prosecute the case in federal district court. The judge there, however, ruled that the federal government had no jurisdiction and so dismissed the case. When the U.S. appealed, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the lower court decision, claiming that federal authorities did indeed have the power to police civil rights violations in any state. United States v. Price (1967) thus produced a landmark decision that signaled a seismic shift in American legal history and race relations, for it meant that local authorities could no longer shield racist lawbreakers.

Ball weaves the tales of victims and perpetrators into a single compelling story in which the legal process becomes as much personal as political. Readers will learn how deputy sheriff Cecil Price and his accomplices planned the execution of the young freedom riders and how prosecutors and judges brought them to justice under conspiracy charges. Along the way, Ball introduces readers to a host of characters from the heyday of the civil rights era-with the NAACP, CORE, and SNCC on one side, and the KKK and its fellow travelers on the other, and politicians sitting squarely on the fence.

Although to this day the murderers have never faced murder charges, United States v. Price emphatically declared that the federal government would no longer tolerate the complicity of local and state authorities in the suppression of the constitutional rights of southern blacks. As we approach the fortieth anniversary of the murders in June 2004, Murder in Mississippi provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if its ideals are to be fully realized.

This book presents the background and history of genocide, the key issues associated with this worldwide crime, and the problems inherent in preventing its occurrence. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), legally defining the crime of genocide for the first time. Amazingly, the United States did not ratify this international agreement until nearly 40 years later, when President Reagan finally signed the genocide convention bill. Attempts to enforce international law against genocide did not begin until the 1990s. Genocide: A Reference Handbook examines the antecedents of the term "genocide" in the mid-19th century and explains the current challenges of preventing or even stopping genocide, including the nation-state system and principles of state sovereignty. The author documents how crimes of genocide have continued unchecked, and asserts that a collective commitment to humanitarian intervention is the only way to address this ongoing problem.

"Choice" Outstanding Academic Title 2003

.,."A thorough summary of the trajectory of current case law on the legal regulation of U.S. citizens' intimate lives. . . . A valuable introduction to increasingly important and salient legal questions about the constitutional limits on the state's ability to shape intimate lives in the United States."
--" Political Science Quarterly"

.,."A worthy assessment of the law of intimate association and personal decision-making. For those intrigued by the Court's human side, Ball provides a sufficient glimpse without raising the curtain on its realm of privacy that the justices have strived to protect.
-- "Trial"

"Despite the controversial content of many of the cases, Mr. Ball maintains an air of bemused detachment and does not openly take sides. This is not a polemic. With few exceptions, the prevailing tone is light and scholarly. The goal is to illuminate, not to persuade."
--"New York Law Journal"

"In this truly fascinating and spellbinding work, Ball tells many tales."
-- "Choice"

Personal rights, such as the right to procreate--or not--and the right to die generate endless debate. This book maps out the legal, political, and ethical issues swirling around personal rights. Howard Ball shows how the Supreme Court has grappled with the right to reproduce and to abort, and takes on the issue of auto-euthanasia and assisted suicide, from Karen Ann Quinlan through Kevorkian and just recently to the Florida case of the woman who was paralyzed by a gunshot from her mother and who had the plug pulled on herself.

For the last half of the twentieth century, the justices of the Supreme Court have had to wrestle with newand difficult life and death questions for them as well as for doctors and their patients, medical ethicists, sociologists, medical practitioners, clergy, philosophers, law makers, and judges. The Supreme Court in the Intimate Lives of Americans offers a look at these issues as they emerged and examines the manner in which the men and women of the U.S. Supreme Court addressed them.

"Ball's arguments are concise, compelling, and backed with considerable case law. This volume is highly recommended for upper-level undergraduates and above in law, philosophy, and the medical humanities interested in the 'right to die' debates. Summing up: Highly recommended." -Choice Over the past hundred years, average life expectancy in America has nearly doubled, due largely to scientific and medical advances, but also as a consequence of safer working conditions, a heightened awareness of the importance of diet and health, and other factors. Yet while longevity is celebrated as an achievement in modern civilization, the longer people live, the more likely they are to succumb to chronic, terminal illnesses. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47 years, with a majority of American deaths attributed to influenza, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. In 2000, the average life expectancy was nearly 80 years, and for too many people, these long lifespans included cancer, heart failure, Lou Gehrig's disease, AIDS, or other fatal illnesses, and with them, came debilitating pain and the loss of a once-full and often independent lifestyle. In this compelling and provocative book, noted legal scholar Howard Ball poses the pressing question: is it appropriate, legally and ethically, for a competent individual to have the liberty to decide how and when to die when faced with a terminal illness? At Liberty to Die charts how, the right of a competent, terminally ill person to die on his or her own terms with the help of a doctor has come deeply embroiled in debates about the relationship between religion, civil liberties, politics, and law in American life. Exploring both the legal rulings and the media frenzies that accompanied the Terry Schiavo case and others like it, Howard Ball contends that despite raging battles in all the states where right to die legislation has been proposed, the opposition to the right to die is intractable in its stance. Combining constitutional analysis, legal history, and current events, Ball surveys the constitutional arguments that have driven the right to die debate.

The "ethnic cleansing" that has gripped the Balkans for much of this decade is but another chapter in the long history of man's inhumanity to man. Hopeful but unflinching in the face of such realities, Howard Ball's book focuses on international efforts to punish perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes. Combining history, politics, and critical analysis, he revisits the killing fields of Cambodia, documents the three-month Hutu "machete genocide" of about 800,000 Tutsi villagers in Rwanda, and casts recent headlines from Kosovo in the light of these other conflicts.

Beginning with the 1899 Geneva Accords and the Armenian genocide of World War I, Ball traces efforts to create an institution to judge, punish, and ultimately deter such atrocities-particularly since World War II, since which there have been fourteen cases of genocide. He shows how international military tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo set important precedents for international criminal justice, tells what the international community learned from its failure to stop Pol Pot in Cambodia, and describes the ad hoc tribunals convened to address genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda. He then focuses on the establishment of the International Criminal Court with the Treaty of Rome in 1998 and assesses its probable future.

The book also analyzes the reluctance of the United States to sanction the ICC, tracing longstanding U.S. reluctance to grant criminal justice jurisdiction to an international prosecutor. Ball examines questions of national sovereignty versus international law and reminds us that although most Americans consider such horrors to be problems of other countries, these are in fact countries in which many of our own citizens have their roots.

With its unique focus on the ICC, "Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide" is a work of both synthesis and advocacy that combines history and current events to make us more aware of the racist fervor with which these brutalities are carried out, more alert to the euphemisms in which they are cloaked. It forces us to ask not only whether the killing will stop, but whether humanity can prevent future genocides.

This book provides a comprehensive and contemporary examination of the right-to-die issues facing society now that vast improvements in public health care and medicine have resulted in people not only living longer but taking much longer to die-often in great pain and suffering. In 1900, the average age at which people died in America was 47 years of age; the primary causes of death were tuberculosis and other respiratory illnesses. In the 21st century, as a result of better health care and working conditions as well as advances in medical technology, we live much longer-as of 2016, about 80 years. A much larger proportion of Americans now die from chronic diseases that generally appear at an advanced age, such as heart disease, cancer, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Should this fundamental change in human lifespan alter how society and government view right-to-die legislation? What are the pros and cons of giving a mentally competent person who is terminally ill and in great pain the right to end his or her life? The Right to Die: A Reference Handbook provides a complete examination of right-to-die issues in the United States that dissects the complex arguments for and against a person's liberty to receive a physician's assistance to hasten death. It covers the legal aspects and the politics of the right-to-die controversy, analyzes the battles over the right to die in state and federal courts, and supplies primary source documents that illustrate the political, medical, legal, religious, and ethical landscape of the right to die. Additionally, the book examines how members of our society typically die has changed in the past 150 years and how the practice of medicine has evolved over that time; explains why the right to die is strongly opposed by many religious groups as well as members of the medical profession; considers the "slippery slope" argument against doctor-assisted suicide; and identifies the reasons that the disabled, the poor, the elderly and infirm, and some members of ethnic, racial, and religious minority groups typically fear physician-assisted death. Provides readers a clear picture of the complexity of the right-to-die controversy as it has emerged in the courts and in the political branches of state and federal governments Presents perspectives written by advocates for and against the right to die that give personal insight into the reasons for their positions Supplies a selection of primary source documents that represent viewpoints from both sides of the right-to-die controversy Includes a fully annotated chapter that provides readers with secondary resources such as books, journal articles, and medical reports with which to explore the issue further

Taking the Fight South provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if racial justice is to be fully realized. Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written dozens of books during his career, including the landmark biography of Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and the critically acclaimed Murder in Mississippi, chronicling the Mississippi Burning killings. In Taking the Fight South, arguably his most personal book, Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when, against the advice of friends and colleagues in New York, he and his Jewish family moved from the Bronx to Starkville, Mississippi, where he received a tenured position in the political science department at Mississippi State University. For Ball, his wife, Carol, and their three young daughters, the move represented a leap of faith, ultimately illustrating their deep commitment toward racial justice. Ball, with breathtaking historical authority, narrates the experience of his family as Jewish outsiders in Mississippi, an unfamiliar and dangerous landscape contending with the aftermath of the civil rights struggle. Signs and natives greeted them with a humiliating and frightening message: "No Jews, Negroes, etc., or dogs welcome." From refereeing football games, coaching soccer, and helping young black girls integrate the segregated Girl Scout troops in Starkville, to life-threatening calls from the KKK in the middle of the night, from his work for the ACLU to his arguments in the press and before a congressional committee for the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Ball takes the reader to a precarious time and place in the history of the South. He was briefly an observer but quickly became an activist, confronting white racists stubbornly holding on to a Jim Crow white supremacist past and fighting to create a more diverse, equitable, and just society. Ball's story is one of an imitable advocate who didn't just observe as a passive spectator but interrupted injustice. Taking the Fight South will join the list of required books to read about the Black Lives Matter movement and the history of racism in the United States. The book will also appeal to readers interested in Judaism because of its depiction of anti-Semitism directed toward Starkville's Jewish community, struggling to survive in the heart of the deep and very fundamentalist Protestant South.

"Ball's arguments are concise, compelling, and backed with considerable case law. This volume is highly recommended for upper-level undergraduates and above in law, philosophy, and the medical humanities interested in the 'right to die' debates. Summing up: Highly recommended." -Choice Over the past hundred years, average life expectancy in America has nearly doubled, due largely to scientific and medical advances, but also as a consequence of safer working conditions, a heightened awareness of the importance of diet and health, and other factors. Yet while longevity is celebrated as an achievement in modern civilization, the longer people live, the more likely they are to succumb to chronic, terminal illnesses. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47 years, with a majority of American deaths attributed to influenza, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. In 2000, the average life expectancy was nearly 80 years, and for too many people, these long lifespans included cancer, heart failure, Lou Gehrig's disease, AIDS, or other fatal illnesses, and with them, came debilitating pain and the loss of a once-full and often independent lifestyle. In this compelling and provocative book, noted legal scholar Howard Ball poses the pressing question: is it appropriate, legally and ethically, for a competent individual to have the liberty to decide how and when to die when faced with a terminal illness? At Liberty to Die charts how, the right of a competent, terminally ill person to die on his or her own terms with the help of a doctor has come deeply embroiled in debates about the relationship between religion, civil liberties, politics, and law in American life. Exploring both the legal rulings and the media frenzies that accompanied the Terry Schiavo case and others like it, Howard Ball contends that despite raging battles in all the states where right to die legislation has been proposed, the opposition to the right to die is intractable in its stance. Combining constitutional analysis, legal history, and current events, Ball surveys the constitutional arguments that have driven the right to die debate.

During his thirty-four year tenure as a Justice of the Supreme Court, Hugo L. Black demonstrated, in the words of one of his colleagues, "a true passion for the Constitution." At a moment's notice, in front of visiting students or a clutch of legal dignitaries, the Judge would whip his tattered copy of the Constitution from his coat pocket, flip through it to a particular passage and then, in a high voice, read the passage con vivace. And though Black began his political career in Alabama as the candidate of the Ku Klux Klan--with their help in 1926 he became a U.S. Senator--thirty years later, he would argue forcefully for an end to segregation in the South.

In Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior, distinguished writer Howard Ball draws from Black's extensive files in the Library of Congress and on interviews with his colleagues on the Court, his law clerks, and his family to illuminate the enigmatic career of a man who became one of the twentieth century's most vigilant defenders of freedoms and liberty. Ball's examination of Black's life reveals a consummate politician who kept, in a safe beside his desk, the names, addresses, and backgrounds of all those who gave Black support from the time he ran for the county solicitor's job in Jefferson County, Alabama, through his two terms as a U.S. Senator. A fervent New Deal advocate, Black lent his support to F.D.R.'s court packing plan, and was one of the few who stood with the President until the measure's defeat in 1937. Less than one month later, F.D.R. rewarded Black by nominating him to the Supreme Court. Soon after Black's confirmation by the Senate, the story of his Klan membership spread across the nation, prompting Time magazine to write that "Hugo won't have to buy a robe, he can dye his white one black." One of Black's early opinions for the Court, however, changed most of the negative opinion about him. Writing for the majority in Chambers v. Florida, Black and his colleagues overturned charges against four African-American men unjustly accused of murder.

In addition to Black's political and judicial career, Ball captures some of the great legal minds at work--Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, John M. Harlan II, and William J. Brennan--and their encounters with the tough Justice who was an immovable force when engaged in a constitutional battle. From Brown v. Board of Education and the first tests of the power of the federal courts to implement the Brown decision, to the height of McCarthyism and the national hysteria about Communism, to New York Times v. United States, the famous Pentagon Papers case in 1971 (Black's last opinion for the Court which defended a newspaper's First Amendment rights), Black emerges as a staunch defender of federalism and the primacy of the First Amendment, a strict, literal interpreter of the Constitution, and always proud to be a member of the Supreme Court.

Throughout his life, Hugo Black's cockiness, sternness, and stubborn determination won him many critics. On every occasion, as Howard Ball shows, Black proved his critics wrong. He became a major presence in the Senate and one of the great Justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court.

Thurgood Marshall's extraordinary contribution to civil rights and overcoming racism is more topical than ever, as the national debate on race and the overturning of affirmative action policies make headlines nationwide. Howard Ball, author of eighteen books on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, has done copious research for this incisive biography to present an authoritative portrait of Marshall the jurist.

Born to a middle-class black family in "Jim Crow" Baltimore at the turn of the century, Marshall's race informed his worldview from an early age. He was rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because of the color of his skin. He then attended Howard University's Law School, where his racial consciousness was awakened by the brilliant lawyer and activist Charlie Houston. Marshall suddenly knew what he wanted to be: a civil rights lawyer, one of Houston's "social engineers." As the chief attorney for the NAACP, he developed the strategy for the legal challenge to racial discrimination. His soaring achievements and his lasting impact on the nation's legal system--as the NAACP's advocate, as a federal appeals court judge, as President Lyndon Johnson's solicitor general, and finally as the first African American Supreme Court Justice--are symbolized by Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that ended legal segregation in public schools.

Using race as the defining theme, Ball spotlights Marshall's genius in working within the legal system to further his lifelong commitment to racial equality. With the help of numerous, previously unpublished sources, Ball presents a lucid account of Marshall's illustrious career and his historic impact on American civil rights.


From the Hardcover edition.

While the specificities of individual wars vary, they share a ubiquitous aftermath: the task of finding and identifying the "disappeared." The Bosnian war of the early 1990s that destroyed the sovereign state of Yugoslavia is no exception. In Working in the Killing Fields: Forensic Science in Bosnia, Howard Ball focuses on the recent development of forensic science technology and on the work of forensic professionals in Bosnia. The book offers a distinctive approach to war and its aftermath because it balances examination of complex features of new scientific forensic technology with insights into the lives of the men and women from around the globe who are tasked with finding and excavating bodies and conducting pathological examinations, along with explaining the cause of death to both international court criminal prosecutors and surviving families of the victims. Ball considers the physical dangers these professionals regularly confront while performing their site excavations, as well as the emotional pain, including PTSD, they contend with during their time in Bosnia and after they leave the killing fields.