Vol. 2 No. 9 (September, 1992) pp. 124-125
FROM LOCAL COURTS TO NATIONAL TRIBUNALS: THE FEDERAL COURTS OF
FLORIDA, 1821-1990 by Kermit L. Hall and Eric W. Rise. Brooklyn,
NY: Carlson Publishing Company. 252 pp. Cloth.
Reviewed by Albert R. Matheny, Department of Political Science,
The University of Florida
This history of the Florida federal judiciary was commissioned by
the Eleventh Circuit Historical Society. It would have been easy
for the authors to tiptoe around the more controversial episodes
of the federal district courts' history in Florida, but, for the
most part, Kermit Hall and Eric Rise describe the judi- ciary,
warts and all, and criticize, albeit gently, their sometimes
embarrassingly parochial jurisprudence. Further, the book could
have lapsed into bland description, given that this is a
base-line project, assembling for the first time information on a
subject ignored as a whole in legal history. Instead, the authors
energize their descriptive efforts with references throughout to
current law and society research as well as classic studies in
legal history. They have successfully avoided both the pandering
tone of a corporate biography and the generic flavor of a
reference work. In fact, they have given us an accessible
foundation document on Florida's federal courts that is not only
informative and enter- taining, but also a vital resource for
future historical research on these tribunals. Under the
circumstances, producing such a text must have been a little like
navigating the treacherous shoals they describe in their coverage
of the colorful early maritime salvage litigation so common in
Key West during the nineteenth century.
The primary contributions of this study are, first, its
systematic chronology of legal developments in federal legal
procedure, and contract, property, and criminal law in the
frontier South and, second, its detailed and lively documentation
of the politics surrounding federal judicial selection from
Florida's territorial days to the present. Without any real
self-conscious effort at theorizing, Hall and Rise provide an
excellent case study of the interaction among law, society, and
economy in an area slowly, and sometimes grudgingly, coming under
the influence of a national legal agenda.
The book's structure is simple and straightforward. Between an
introduction and conclusion which locate the study within the
broader sweep of legal history and its scholarship, each chapter
covers from fifteen to twenty-five years of Florida history
corresponding with the standard eras of American experience
(e.g., the antebellum period, Reconstruction, the Progressive
Era, the New Deal, etc.). Within each chapter, the authors pay
attention to the emerging structure of federal jurisdiction in
Florida, the politics of staffing the courts, and the legal
developments in each of the areas of law mentioned above. The
chapters are short, methodical, and very down-toearth in tone.
The emphasis on the law, the personalities, and the politics of
the times is nicely balanced and their command of the subject is
always evident but understated. Following the concluding chapter
are extensive appendices providing a time-line of the district
courts' institutional development through 1990, a biographical
sketch of each judge, a list of all federal court and U.S.
Department of Justice personnel appointed in Florida, and,
finally, detailed caseload frequencies for each federal district
in the state by year with a the national caseload mean supplied
for comparison. The latter is particularly useful for recognizing
changing patterns in litigation over time and reveals the
startling growth which Florida, and particularly the southern
part of the state, have experienced recently.
Of particular interest are the case vignettes from each period
which vivify the challenges of adjudication in a rapidly
developing but overwhelmingly parochial southern state. For
example, the authors' brief coverage of early peonage cases in
Florida reveals both the shocking conditions under which de facto
slavery was extended well into the twentieth century and the
enormous courage of the federal officials who exposed and
prosecuted its operators. There is also a nice account of the
government's ludicrous attempts to prosecute anti-war activists
in the
Page 125 follows:
notable "Gainesville Eight" trial of 1973. Finally, the
dramatic struggles to desegregate St. Augustine in the early
1960s are given sensitive if brief treatment.
Of course, a book of this type and length (147 pages of actual
text) cannot do justice to a subject so large as 170 years of
legal history in one of the nation's most dynamic states. I found
myself wishing for more analysis in each chapter and more
commentary in the footnotes. Sometimes the parade of seemingly
insignificant names became a little numbing, but in a
commissioned history, inclusiveness is a priority. Finally, there
were instances in which the authors' might have pursued a
critical line further. For example, in documenting the bold
efforts of a black school principal in 1941 to make the pay for
black school teachers equal to that of their white counterparts,
the authors seemed to have pulled their punches a bit. The
principal, Vernon McDaniel, convinced Judge Augustine Long of the
Northern District to support his class action alleging that the
salary inequities were racially discriminatory under the due
process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. But
salaries remained unequal as other judges in Florida, including
federal judges, avoided the impact of Long's ruling by upholding
pay scale rating systems which favored white teachers. We are not
told who those federal judges were or specifically why they
resisted Long's ruling. Certainly, it is just as interesting for
history's sake to know which federal judges in the state
perpetuated racism as it is to know about those who challenged
it. A more critical study would surely include such information.
This is a small complaint, particularly because the book is more
often successful at avoiding such pitfalls of commissioned work.
Frankly, Hall and Rise have gone well beyond the genre in
providing us with a readable and worthwhile account of American
legal development in an under-appreciated area of the country.
Any student interested in researching Florida's legal past must
begin with this text, and that constitutes a positive
recommendation. This book is a deserving addition to the growing
list of solid scholarship on Southern legal history.
Copyright 1992