Supreme Court Policymaking and Race: Origins and Development

Examines the origins and development of US Supreme Court policymaking in the area of race between 1801 and 2024.

Supreme Court Policymaking and Race presents a comprehensive and systematic account of the exercise of power by the US Supreme Court in deciding racial policy conflicts beginning with the Marshall Court and ending with the Roberts Court. Author Barbara L. Graham draws upon three related analytic frameworks to evaluate the extent to which the Court's decisions have protected the constitutional and statutory rights of people of color: institutional racial orders, partisan regimes, and jurisprudential regimes. Based on an empirical analysis of the outcomes in 432 race cases decided over fourteen chief justice tenures, Graham provides strong evidence for the claim that with the exception of a fifty-six-year period (1930 until 1986), the Supreme Court has acted as a foe, not a friend, to the rights of people of color. The findings show that when egalitarian political coalitions are in control at the national level, the Court is more likely to further their racial policy goals to protect the legal rights of people of color.