Max Lerner Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Max Lerner (1902–1992) was an influential journalist, scholar, and public intellectual who made contributions to American political thought and culture. During his career, he held a number of faculty positions at leading colleges and universities. He resided the longest at Brandeis University, where he was on the faculty of the American Studies department for twenty-five years. Lerner published more than a dozen books and edited volumes on a wide range of topics. He also wrote introductory essays for a number of others. Lerner served as political editor at The Nation from 1936 to 1938 and contributed articles to a host of other magazines, journals, and newspapers.

Born Mikhail Lerner in Minsk, Russia, on December 20, 1902, Lerner immigrated to the United States with his family in 1907. He was a gifted student and received a BA from Yale University in 1923. After graduating, he enrolled in Yale Law School, but left after less than a year. He began reading the work of sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen, which inspired him to begin studying the social sciences. Lerner earned a masters degree from Washington University in 1925 and his PhD from the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government in 1927. After receiving his PhD, he served as managing editor for the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

Most of Lerner’s early work concerned the U.S. Supreme Court and its role in the New Deal and Great Depression. Two of his most prominent articles at the time were published in the Yale Law Journal. Each article was considered politically radical at the time. Both articles, “The Supreme Court and American Capitalism” (1933) and “Constitution and Court as Symbols” (1937), were indictments against the Supreme Court’s economic jurisprudence and what Lerner considered indifference to socioeconomic issues affecting the country.

Lerner wrote pieces on a number of Supreme Court justices. Louis D. Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. occupied most of his attention. Lerner’s edited volume, The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes (1943), helped to cement Holmes’s reputation as a judicial heavyweight. Similarly, Lerner’s work on Brandeis helped the justice to increase his stature in popular culture and the legal community.

Lerner’s most well-known and influential work was America as a Civilization (1957), a two-volume commentary and analysis of American culture, politics, and history. He made the claim that America is a distinctive and new civilization. The reception to the book was mixed. Some hailed it a great scholarly achievement, while others considered it muddled with no clear thesis.

From 1949 to 1992, Lerner was an outspoken liberal columnist for the New York Post. During that time, he wrote several thousand articles on a wide range of subjects. Commentators have noted that Lerner began his career on the left of the political spectrum and gradually moved toward the right. In his later years, Lerner became much more conservative, or as he termed it, “liberal centrist.”

Despite his contributions, much of Lerner’s work is no longer widely read. He passed away on June 5, 1992, after a long battle with cancer.

Bibliography:

Gordon, Sarah Barringer. “The Creation of a Usable Judicial Past: Max Lerner, Class Conflict, and the Propagation of Judicial Titans.” New York University Law Review 70 (1995): 622–641.
Lakoff, Sanford. Max Lerner: Pilgrim in the Promised Land. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
“The Mind and Faith of Max Lerner.” Social Research 61 (1994): 245–268.
Lerner, Max. “John Marshall and the Campaign of History.” Columbia Law Review 39 (1939): 396–431.
Nine Scorpions in a Bottle: Great Judges and Cases of the Supreme Court. New York: Arcade, 1994.
“The Social Thought of Mr. Brandeis.” Yale Law Journal 41 (1931): 1–32.

This example Max Lerner Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.