Civil Rights Policymaking in the United States ― An Institutional Perspective

Explores the extent to which majority opinion in the United States has shaped Congressional and Supreme Court responses to questions of Civil Rights for African Americans. Romero (public administration, U. of Texas at San Antonio), in examining why the two institutions reacted positively towards some policy and negatively towards others, hopes to provide an assessment whether Federalist theory (as advanced by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton) was correct in seeing the constitutional structure as a facilitator between majoritarian democratic process and protection of the rights of minorities. While she finds that the Congress did behave according to the Founder's expectations in responding to majority opinion, she argues that the Supreme Court did not always protect minority constitutional rights because of the influence of the ideologies of the justices. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

FRANCINE SANDERS ROMERO is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author ofPresidents from Theodore Roosevelt through Coolidge, 1901-1929 (Greenwood Press, 2001).