The Transition: Interpreting Justice from Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas

University of Memphis law professor Kiel debuts with an intriguing examination of the “diametrically opposed” legal approaches Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall and his successor, Clarence Thomas, took to achieving the same goal: “to create a relationship between citizens and government that would lead to fuller Black citizenship.” Combining biography with legal analysis, Kiel pays careful attention to the inflection points of their lives, including Marshall’s decision not to apply to the University of Maryland law school in 1930 because it “was closed to Black students,” a disappointment that helped spur the legal campaign behind Brown v. Board of Education. Meanwhile, Thomas’s early years were marked by an instability that reached a tenuous equilibrium when he was sent to live with his well-off grandparents. Admiration for his grandfather, coupled with the difficulties of desegregation and integration and his own struggles to find a suitable job after graduating from Yale law school in 1974 led to Thomas’s “rift with much of the Black community” and his alignment with the Republican Party. Kiel reveals some surprising similarities between the two, including a shared distrust of institutional authority, while never losing sight of their fundamental differences. The result is an enriching and nuanced study of the debates over how best to promote racial progress in America. (Apr.)