Suitts discussed his book last month at the Library of Congress. Only a few hundred yards away, the Senate Judiciary Committee was grilling Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. The following is an interview with Suitts:
Q: Black seems to have taken divergent stands in his lifetime. To what do you attribute this?
A: I think it relates to the divisions that were in Alabama at the time. Hard to imagine how someone could not be torn in different ways, given the conflicts that emerged in Birmingham, Ala., at the turn of the century. It was where the great conflicts [occurred] between labor and capital, blacks and whites, Protestants and Catholics, between people’s definitions of good and evil. Q: How did he prevent his early struggles from quashing his ambition?
A: There were moments when he wasn’t sure he could continue on this grand plan ... of self-improvement. He was remarkably self-disciplined, and what drove him as a young boy in Clay County was, he thought his father lacked any discipline. His father would get drunk on a weekly, if not a daily, basis. And this drove a little boy to think that self-discipline was a very important virtue. Q: How did Black reconcile the reason Franklin Roosevelt appointed him to the court, which was to reverse the judicial activism that curtailed the New Deal, with his role on Brown, which allowed for the court to desegregate schools?
A: To him, [the New Deal] was a far different issue than the issue of whether people were guaranteed the right to the 14th Amendment. As he said in a 1968 interview that was telecast nationally by CBS, as to why the court ... reversed Plessy [which upheld segregation in 1896], he said he didn’t need any philosophy, he didn’t need any changing times to convince him that segregated schools were a violation of equal-protection law. He knew it was a violation then, it was a violation now, and would be a violation in the future. Q: How do you believe he balanced his principles and his ambition when he joined the KKK?
A: What he said to his sister at the time may be the most revealing. He said, “It’s the right thing to do, but I am not doing right.” ... I think it was a very difficult decision for him ... but he thought it was the right decision, and he never apologized for it. Q: What do you think his impressions would be of the Bush administration?
A: I think he would probably have some trouble understanding the notion of our being at war at the moment. While he would respect the notion of a congressional resolution, I’m not sure Justice Black’s liberal views of the Constitution [lend themselves to the belief] that a resolution is necessarily the same as a declaration of war, and probably would be much more reluctant to use that congressional authority to authorize what might be called war-time provisions. And, finally, I think he would probably think that this Republican administration was doing nothing for promoting the economic interests of American citizens. He would think it was far too heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists, whom he despised. Q: Which current Supreme Court justice would he most closely resemble philosophically?
A: The great ultra-liberal justice, the epitome of the activist Supreme Court, Justice Hugo Black, probably today would resemble Justice [Antonin] Scalia closer than any other justice. Justice Black believed in a written Constitution, a literal Constitution, a literal reading of the Constitution. Q: What draws you to Hugo Black after having written this book?
A: What drove me to it was how remarkable an individual he was in shaping our expectations of what the law is and our assumptions about what the law should be. It’s ironic that his interpretation of the Constitution is adopted by probably no one, but his effect on our views of the Constitution is very widespread in legal circles and among the general public. | 
