In this Book
- John McKinley and the Antebellum Supreme Court: Circuit Riding in the Old Southwest
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: The University of Alabama Press
summary
Provides a penetrating analysis of US Supreme Court justice John McKinley
Steven P. Brown rescues from obscurity John McKinley, one of the three Alabama justices, along with John Archibald Campbell and Hugo Black, who have served on the US Supreme Court. A native Kentuckian who moved in 1819 to northern Alabama as a land speculator and lawyer, McKinley was elected to the state legislature three times and became first a senator and then a representative in the US Congress before being elevated to the Supreme Court in 1837. He spent his first five years on the court presiding over the newly created Ninth Circuit, which covered Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. His was not only the newest circuit, encompassing a region that, because of its recent settlement, included a huge number of legal claims related to property, but it was also the largest, the furthest from Washington, DC, and by far the most difficult to traverse.
While this is a thorough biography of McKinley’s life, it also details early Alabama state politics and provides one of the most exhaustive accounts available of the internal workings of the antebellum Supreme Court and the very real challenges that accompanied the now-abandoned practice of circuit riding. In providing the first in depth assessment of the life and Supreme Court career of Justice John McKinley, Brown has given us a compelling portrait of a man active in the leading financial, legal, and political circles of his day.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- List of Illustrations
- pp. vii-viii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xi
- 3. Alabama Fever and Georgia Faction
- pp. 29-44
- 4. The Politics of Political Change
- pp. 45-71
- 9. The Legacies of Justice John McKinley
- pp. 225-236
- Bibliography
- pp. 293-306
Additional Information
ISBN
9780817386269
Related ISBN(s)
9780817317713, 9780817360801
MARC Record
OCLC
819635044
Pages
327
Launched on MUSE
2012-12-20
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2012