Civil Rights and the Reagan Court: Challenging the Second Reconstruction

It took all of Ronald Reagan’s eight years. But it now appears that he achieved one of his major goals: hastening an end to the Second Reconstruction in America. Reagan not only succeeded in reducing the protection of specific laws; he transformed the federal judiciary, once the foremost champion of individual rights, into a threat to those laws.

The key to this transformation was the Reagan appointments to the Supreme Court. Along with Nixon appointee William H. Rehnquist, whom ...