“The Long Walk Home” to Politics

Abstract

W th the Supreme Court now in the hands of seven solidly conservative justices, liberals face a long walk home to the political activism which they participated in during the 1950s and 1960s. Along the way they may find Gerald Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope a sobering review of the last generation during which litigation rather than activism became the major channel for pursuing liberal goals. In lengthy case studies of school desegregation and abortion, and shorter studies of gender discrimination, criminal procedure, reapportionment, and environmental protection, Rosenberg sifts the empirical record for evidence that judicial victories have achieved real gains for the social movements that pursued them. Rosenberg's hard-nosed review of the data (supplemented by the creation of some original measures) is animated by a desire to challenge what he views as the pernicious myth that the Warren and early Burger Courts were the great engine of political transformation from the 1950s to the 1970s. In most instances he finds little for advocates of litigation to cheer about: court decisions sometimes do achieve ef-

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