Kevin McMahon
Assistant Professor of Political Science
It certainly is an interesting time to be a Supreme Court scholar,
considering all the recent activity in the judicial branch of
government. For Kevin McMahon, it also represents an opportunity to
connect classroom teaching with important current events that have
grabbed the attention of the entire nation, including college
students. McMahon, in his first semester at Trinity, is teaching a
senior seminar called “The Politics of Judicial Policy Making.” He
notes with obvious understatement that the timing is fortuitous.
“It’s great because there haven’t been any Supreme Court
appointments for ten years and now there just happen to be two
during this semester. It makes it much more interesting for the
students because the issues at stake are things they know and care
about.”
McMahon moved to the
Hartford area from upstate New York last summer with his wife,
Stephanie, where he was teaching at the State University of New
York, Fredonia. In the mid-nineties, he spent two years teaching in
Russia as part of the Civic Education Project. He was attracted to
Trinity, he says, because of its size and intellectual vitality. He
particularly likes the small class sizes and the opportunity to have
extensive interaction with students, both in and out of the
classroom. Stephanie, who was a television reporter in Buffalo, is
an executive producer of special projects at NBC30 in West Hartford.
The couple shares their Farmington home with a cat, Tasha, and a
dog, Abbie.
McMahon wrote his
dissertation at Brandeis University on the judicial appointments of
presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Ronald
Reagan. That research led McMahon to focus his attention on FDR’s
civil rights record, which he ultimately found to be somewhat
misunderstood. “When I was working on the Roosevelt section, I
discovered that there was actually a much bigger story to tell,” he
says. “When I looked at his judicial policies, as opposed to his
legislative policies, I realized that there was a clear attempt on
his part to try to convince the Court to be more sympathetic on
issues of civil rights. His legislative record is noticeably weak on
civil rights, which I think is indicative of the power of the
Southern states in Congress at the time, but if you look at the
judicial side of things, it’s a different story.”
McMahon tells that
story in his book, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the
Presidency Paved the Road to Brown, which won the Richard E.
Neustadt Award as the best book on the American presidency in 2004.
The award, from the American Political Science Association, is given
annually to honor an individual “whose work has incited a broader
view of the impact and influence of the presidency.”
As for the recent
spate of Supreme Court activity, McMahon says that people of all
eras frequently think they are living in unique times but that
history suggests otherwise. “Today, the situation is a little
different,” he explains. “No longer are well known politicians like
Chief Justice Earl Warren appointed to the Court. Instead, to secure
confirmation, presidents seemingly have to search for relatively
unknown nominees who have not been deeply involved in the great
controversies of the day.”
What they’re reading …
Stacy Swift
Office Coordinator, Community and Institutional Relations
One of the most
memorable books I’ve read recently is March: A Novel, by
Geraldine Brooks. In short, the story imagines the Civil War
experiences of Captain March, the absent father in Louisa May
Alcott’s Little Women. While his wife and daughters wait
patiently at home in Concord, Massachusetts, March experiences the
horrors of war, serious illness, and the difficulty of learning to
live with human suffering.
March is a Union chaplain influenced by
Thoreau, Emerson and, especially, John Brown. His high-minded ideals
are continually thwarted not only by the culture of the times, but
by his own ineptitude as well. A staunch abolitionist, he is
amazingly naive about human nature. His radical politics are an
embarrassment to the less-ideological men, and he is appalled by
their lack of abolitionist sentiments and their cruelty. Here his
faith in himself and in his religious and political convictions are
tested.
Brooks’s novel is beautifully written, and offers a provoking,
intimate—and perhaps more complete—portrait of life during the Civil
War for the March family. I admit that I was skeptical at first, but
March proves to be an enjoyable addition to Louisa May
Alcott’s original story.
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