RSS

Garrett Epps

Garrett Epps is a contributing editor at The American Prospect. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and a professor of law at the University of Baltimore. His most recent book is Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America.

Recent Articles

Divisional Playoff

Garrett EppsMay 23, 2003

"The two omnipresent parties of history," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1841, are "the party of the Past and the party of the Future." The problem, now as then, is knowing which political party -- Republican or Democrat -- is which. Continental Divide, a fascinating linked pair of plays by British playwright David Edgar that had its world premiere in Ashland, Ore. on March 1 -- and is slated to open in Berkeley, Calif. later this year -- poses that question for Americans with unusual poignancy.

Grand Illusion

Garrett EppsFeb 28, 2003

In 2001 historian David Brion Davis wrote in The New York Times, "The United States is only now beginning to recover from the Confederacy's ideological victory following the Civil War." In fact, reports of our recovery may be exaggerated; many white Americans are still holding out in the jungle like Japanese soldiers after World War II. Consider the recent fall of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a victim not of racial nostalgia but of excessive frankness. Consider also the recent Republican takeover of state and federal offices in Georgia, largely on the issue of the Confederate battle flag. And consider that a proposal to put build a small statue of Abraham Lincoln in my old hometown of Richmond, Va., has been greeted by many whites as if the proposed honoree were Saddam Hussein.

Sterling Character

Garrett EppsJan 16, 2003

As a character in a James Thurber cartoon once said, I am still waiting for greatness to be thrust upon me. Watching cable news, I clutch my remote in rage as I imagine myself, gifted with overnight power but unburdened by political debts or campaign commitments, striding the corridors of influence and driving the Beltway crowd before me like the wind.

Books in Review

Garrett EppsDec 05, 2002

First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life

By Kenneth Starr. Warner Books, 320 pages, $26.95

Bill Clinton did not destroy his opponents; he drove them insane, and they destroyed themselves. Of all the careers Clinton ended in ignominy -- Bob Dole, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich come to mind -- one of the most poignant is that of former judge and Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr. Until he became independent counsel, Starr was a revered figure in Washington whose integrity and geniality had won respect from many who disagreed with his conservative legal philosophy.

Courting Disaster

Garrett EppsOct 17, 2002

More than a decade ago, I ran into a friend at a college bookstore. At the time, this man was a professional semiotician and the world's leading academic expert on the delightfully trashy prime-time soap opera "Dallas." On an impulse, I asked him what he thought of the then-new and very hot "L.A. Law."

Plainly thinking about this for the first time, he gazed meditatively into the distance for a few seconds and said, "To the American unconscious, the word law means one thing and one thing only: sex. During the era of 'Perry Mason,' society's rule was thou shalt not. In the era of 'L.A. Law,' the commandment is thou shalt."

Pages