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57 Minn. L. Rev. 423 (1972-1973)
Book Reviews

handle is hein.journals/mnlr57 and id is 437 raw text is: Book Reviews Ma. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER AND Tm CONSTrTON. By Philip B. Kurland.* Chicago and London: The University of Chi- cago Press, 1971. Pp. 226. $10.50 The author of this little book is widely known in academic circles as an outstanding legal scholar. We now find that he has a special talent which neither he nor, perhaps, anyone else has heretofore exhibited. He has invented a technique for de- priving the book reviewer of the ability to offer any signifi- cant criticism of his work. Consider: Here is a book which attempts to present in only 226 pages of text the constitutional views of one of this century's foremost interpreters of the Constitution. Here is a book which admits that Really to understand what Justice Frankfurter was doing, it would be necessary to examine all the opinions he produced and the positions that he took in the context of partic- ular cases,' and yet offers its reader only a set of limited ex- cerpts from selected opinions. Surely, therefore, this is a book which may justifiably be subjected to the ultimate criticism, Viz., that it should not have been written. But wait. Professor Kurland discloses that, Some of my non-lawyer colleagues in the academic community in which I try to work have asked me to provide them with materials from the Justice's opinions shorter than a comprehensive compila- tion.'2 His expressed hope is merely that the collection proves informative to those who have asked for it and perhaps even to some who did not.3 We thus discover that we are reading the published form of a paper which was, in effect, privately commissioned by non- lawyers who asked for something short, rather than compre- hensive, and who, one may reasonably suppose, got exactly what they wanted. If one argues that the book is inadequate for the purposes of a scholar of constitutional law, the point be- * Professor of Law, University of Chicago. 1. P. KunLAND, ML JUSTcE FRANKFURTER AND THE CONSTITUTION xiii (1971). 2. Id. 3. 1& at xiv.

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