Thurgood Marshall: Justice For All explores the life and career of the man who did more to improve the conditions of the underdog in American society than any other attorney in the twentieth century. As counsel for the NAACP Legal and Education Fund for a quarter of a century, Marshall fought ceaselessly against segregation and spoke eloquently for the civil rights of all Americans. Winning twenty-nine of the thirty-two cases he argued before the Supreme Court, he established a record that to this day stands unparalleled in American judicial history. In 1967 he joined that court and served as an associate justice until his retirement in 1991. The first section of Thurgood Marshall: Justice For All offers nine recollections of Marshall as a man, an attorney, a federal judge and a justice. Seven of these pieces were written by people who either clerked for Marshall or worked closely with him at the NAACP or United States Supreme Court. Together they comprise an intimately detailed portrait of the associate justice whose wit has become as famous as his wisdom. In the second section of the book, a comprehensive essay by Roger Goldman, a professor of constitutional law, examines Marshall's jurisprudence and philosophy as an associate Supreme Court justice. It focuses on those issues that Marshall most passionately espoused--civil rights, the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, education, poverty. The third section of the book, a selection of the opinions and dissents that Marshall himself wrote as an associate justice on the Supreme Court, illuminates Marshall's particular sensitivity to the issues discussed by Goldman in his essay. It pointedly illustrates too Marshall's compassion, intelligence, incisiveness, and genius.
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