The Supreme Court of Florida and Its Predecessor Courts, 1821-1917.

The Supreme Court of Florida and Its Predecessor Courts, 1821-1917. Edited by Walter W. Manley II, E. Canter Brown Jr., and Eric W. Rise. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 1997. Pp. xviii, 454. $49.95, ISBN 0-8130-1540-5.)

This timely study of Florida's supreme court examines the legal and structural evolution of the court, the lives of its justices, and a wide range of court decisions. It is the most comprehensive treatment of any state supreme court during the nineteenth century, when state constitutional law was preeminent. This book provides lengthy biographical sketches of all fifty-one men who served as territorial judges or supreme court justices between 1821 and 1917--groundbreaking research on most all of them--and devotes a substantial amount of space to social, economic, and political developments in order to demonstrate how they shaped and were shaped by the work of the court. This volume draws upon recent Florida historiography--much of it by this volume's co-editor, E. Canter Brown Jr.--that persuasively links regional economic development, contests for political power, and race relations within the state. The Supreme Court of Florida and Its Predecessor Courts also makes an important contribution to both Florida and southern history.

President James Monroe appointed Florida's first district judges in 1821. In 1824 the U.S. Congress established Florida's territorial court of appeals that consisted of district judges. Federal control of judicial appointments gave way in 1845, with the arrival of statehood, and was replaced by the state legislature's election of judges. Florida's supreme court became an "independent" body in 1851, with its three justices separate from the circuit court bench. Florida then undertook a brief experiment with the popular election of its supreme court and circuit court judges that lasted from 1853 until the advent of the Civil War. The secession convention feared unionist strength in some areas and modified the state constitution to give the governor appointment powers to the supreme and circuit courts. This arrangement endured when ex-Confederates wrote the 1865 constitution and when Republicans--wary of unreconstructed voters--adopted a new constitution in 1868. The Redeemers were only too happy to preserve gubernatorial appointment power when they gained power in 1877. Democrats at the 1885 constitutional convention, no longer much challenged at the state level, returned election of supreme court justices--although not of circuit judges--to the people beginning in 1888.

The high court's heavy case load led voters in 1902 to approve expansion of the court to six justices. The sources of the high court's workload are explored in this volume's excellent sections on Florida's social, economic, and political history. About one hundred of the thousands of cases that Floridians appealed to their supreme court, selected to show the range and significance of the court's work, are discussed in the book. Cases involving antebellum land grants, election results, and political violence in the Reconstruction and Redemption years, as well as Progressive-era railroad regulation, are especially well illuminated. The cases demonstrate the court's profound impact on the direction of the state.

The book stops short of addressing some areas in the literature on state supreme courts. The lives of the justices are not given prosopographical analysis. Although a few slavery-related cases are discussed, the book has less to say than might be expected on the the law of slavery, a prominent topic for southern supreme courts. The organization of the material for each historical era into designated chapters on background, biography, and cases hurts the book's analytical flow. Nevertheless, with this volume, Florida's nineteenth-century court goes from being one of the least studied to one of the best studied state supreme courts.

CRAIG BUETTINGER

Jacksonville University