From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, Orville Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Supreme Court's race record-uplifting, distressing, and even disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Supreme Court's race jurisprudence, detailing the development of legal and constitutional doctrine, the justices' reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings.

In addressing such issues as the changing interpretations of the Reconstruction amendments, Japanese internment in World War II, the exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries, and affirmative action, the authors bring doctrine to life by introducing the people and events at the heart of the story of race in the United States. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the country's promise of equal rights for all.