In a new biography of Harlan, The Great Dissenter, Peter S. Canellos—an editor at Politico and the author of a biography of Ted Kennedy—says that Americans don’t yet fully appreciate this personal and political transformation, if they even recognize Harlan’s name at all ... This new book is a worthy addition: Solidly accessible and thoroughly researched, it makes a persuasive case for Harlan’s significance and sometimes reads like a mystery ... Canellos discerns an unbroken thread running through Harlan’s life. The judge harbored a lifelong abhorrence of national divisions — it’s just that his understanding of who was responsible for the most fractious of those divisions would change according to his experiences. His conversion to the civil rights cause was hard-won ... Canellos is protective of his biographical subject, straining to put a charitable gloss on some of Harlan’s more troubling comments from the bench.

Mr. Canellos rescues these cases from law-school casebooks and situates them in American history ... Harlan’s account of our 'color-blind' Constitution will surely (and rightly) attract attention in the years ahead. And his criticism of monopoly power will echo in today’s debates over big-tech companies and social-media platforms. We would all do well to look more deeply into the ideas and ideals that informed his dissents and the qualities of character that enabled him to stand alone in their defense.

Although John Harlan is the book’s titular protagonist, Robert Harlan is its most intriguing character—on his own terms, not merely as a vehicle for understanding John’s conscience on race. The author’s affection for both men emerges in his writing, which at times edges close to excusing John’s less enlightened views (including his participation in unanimous opinions excluding Chinese Americans from equal standing). Still, overall this is a sensitive and smart excavation of two men’s entwined lives .. 'There are silences in American history,' Canellos writes in the book’s introduction. Hidden by one such silence is the truth about what happened to Black Americans in the years after Reconstruction ... With The Great Dissenter, and the story of the Harlan men, he has gone some distance in ending that silence.

A sympathetic and well-written new biography ... Canellos portrays Harlan as a man of principle often standing alone against some of the worst-ever Supreme Court decisions ... In explaining Harlan’s willingness to stand alone on race, Canellos credits his religious faith, reverence for the Constitution, and close ties to an enslaved man named Robert, whom Canellos says the Harlans treated like a member of the family. Robert may have been a blood relative, resulting from a relationship between Harlan’s father and an enslaved woman ... Some of the ink devoted to Robert might have been better spent further exploring the Harlans’ complex and often paternalistic attitude towards the family’s other enslaved workers. Canellos leaves out unflattering details noted by earlier biographers that implicate Harlan more directly as a slaveholder ... Canellos acknowledges criticism directed at Harlan by modern legal scholars for joining the majority in rulings, including ones detrimental to Black public education and problematic for Chinese immigrants. But he puts the best possible gloss on court opinions readers today might think Harlan got wrong. This biography focuses more on making the case for Harlan’s greatness than harping on the occasional inconsistency or shortcoming.

Instead of the definitive say on Harlan’s legacy, this biography offers thoughtful contributions to these ongoing debates and insights into the principles shaping the justice’s thinking, bringing us closer to comprehending his unsettled legacy and, more tellingly, casting a light on why it has morphed over time ... should Harlan be revered or reviled? Canellos does not definitively settle this question, but the ways the rest of us attempt to answer it will surely influence contemporary constitutional debates and reveal a great deal about our own changing values.

... a sensitive and balanced telling ... The subject of Canellos’ book isn’t just one man, but also the incredibly strange, heartbreaking complexity of race relations in America during that man’s lifetime ... engrossing.

In this meticulously researched and acutely analytical biography, Canellos offers a nuanced portrait of the Supreme Court justice whose arguments in some of the most consequential cases in American jurisprudence earned him the titular sobriquet, 'The Great Dissenter'.

Biographer Canellos intertwines in this original and eye-opening biography the lives of Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan and his rumored half-brother, Robert Harlan, who was born a slave ... Written in lively prose and enriched with colorful character sketches and a firm command of the legal issues involved, this is a masterful introduction to two fascinating figures in American history.

Canellos, the former executive editor of Politico, delivers the riveting story of a courageous Kentucky lawyer who initiated significant challenges to anti–civil rights measures during an era of ubiquitous bigotry ... Given the recent heated debates about Supreme Court justices and civil rights legislation, this expert biography is especially timely and significant. An impressive work of deep research that moves smoothly along biographical as well as legal lines.