San Antonio College Library

"Any effort to understand how law works has to take seriously its main players--judges. Like any performance, judging should be evaluated by reference to those who are its best exponents. Not surprisingly, the debate about what makes a 'great judge' is as heated and inconclusive as the debate about the purpose and nature of law itself. History shows that those who are generally considered to be candidates for a judicial hall of fame are game changers...

The definitive biography of the first Latina and third woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court from the biographer of Condoleezza Rice and Laura Bush. The author delves behind the headlines to tell the compelling story of how the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants living in the South Bronx became one of the greatest legal minds in the country. With insight and thoughtful analysis, she explores the tenacity that makes Sotomayor a sharp, fearless...

Generations of law students have been raised on his inspiring dissents. His book, THE COMMON LAW, still in print after 100 years, dominates the history of legal thought in America. He is still one of the best known justices of the Supreme Court ... yet until now there has been no biography of Oliver Wendall Holmes. Born into mid-19th century Boston society, Holmes grew up knowing everyone. As a young man, he fought in the Civil War and was seriously...

The author captures the story of Constance Baker Motley, a remarkable figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first Black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only Black...

Civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall's triumph in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate America's public schools completed the final leg of an heroic journey to end legal segregation. For 20 years, during wartime and the Depression, Marshall had traveled hundreds of thousands of miles through the Jim Crow South of the United States, fighting segregation case by case, establishing precedent after precedent, all...

John Roberts was named to the Supreme Court in 2005 claiming he would act as a neutral umpire in deciding cases. His critics argue he has been anything but, pointing to his conservative victories on voting rights and campaign finance. Yet he broke from orthodoxy in his decision to preserve Obamacare. Biskupic takes us inside the momentous legal decisions of his tenure so far, contending that Roberts is torn between two, often divergent, priorities:...

"She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her class at law school in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O'Connor's story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings -- doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness....

"On January 1, 1937, Manuel B. Bravo was sworn in as county judge of Zapata County, a post he would hold for twenty years. In Border Boss: Manuel B. Bravo and Zapata County, J. Gilberto Quezada delineates Bravo's political career in the Democratic Party and examines his role in some of the important issues of his day, especially Falcon Dam." "Those interested in Mexican-American studies and politics and bossism in South Texas will appreciate the window...

"From an acclaimed, New York Times bestselling biographer, a timely reassessment of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of the Treasury: a leading proponent for black rights both before and during his years in cabinet and later as Chief Justice of the United States. Salmon P. Chase is best remembered as a rival of Lincoln's for the Republican nomination in 1860--but there would not have been a national Republican Party, and Lincoln could not...