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32 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. v (2007)

handle is hein.journals/jspcth32 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction Melvin I. Urofsky As a constitutional historian of a certain age, I often have this little shock ofrecognition when I am writing, as a scholar, about a case I remember reading about as a citizen. I was a freshman in high school in a small, upstate New York town when the Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). I recall our civics teacher saying how important it was, but for those of us who had not (yet) traveled far, and certainly not into the South, it meant little. I was in graduate school in New York City when the Court decided Engel v. Vitale (1962), and while it had been a long time since my school day in Liberty had begun with a prayer, the resulting furor could not be missed. It seemed as if everyone, beginning with Fran- cis Cardinal Spellman, had something, usu- ally negative, to say about the ban on com- pulsory school prayer. Bruce Dierenfeld, who has just finished a book on the case, takes us back to look at those reactions, and to remind us that the debate on the case is one of long standing. Similarly, the women's movement had gained a great deal of momentum, and those of us interested in gender equality watched with fascination as the Equal Rights Amendment failed to win ratification, while the Supreme Court, in a series of cases usually argued by Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, essentially placed the mantle of the Equal Protection Clause around the shoulders ofwomen. Jeremy Bressman takes us back to the case in which a new standard for review of gender inequality cases would be judged, and which is still, in many instances, the guiding standard used by the courts. As a historian, I know that (a) the Senate over the past two centuries has not confirmed all presidential appointees to the judiciary; and (b) until the twentieth century, nominees did not even appear in person before the Sen- ate Judiciary Committee. In what is still the longest and most bruising confirmation bat- tle in our history, that of Louis D. Brandeis in 1916, the nominee, while certainly taking a key role in rebutting accusations against him, never made a public utterance about the con- firmation during the four months it went on and never appeared before the subcommit- tee hearings. To the reader of the newspapers v

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