Pontz on Eisenhower's Crusaders: District Court Appointments as Civil Rights Policy, 1953-1961

Ben Pontz, Harvard Law school, has published Eisenhower's Crusaders: District Court Appointments as Civil Rights Policy, 1953-1961 at 55 Presidential Studies Quarterly 115 (2025). Here is the abstract.

During his eight years in office, President Eisenhower appointed 182 federal judges, 127 of whom served on federal district courts. Historical and legal scholarship has paid considerable attention to the judiciary's role in the Civil Rights Era as well as to Eisenhower's civil-rights legacy. The scholarship has not, however, connected those two strands to examine how Eisenhower used judicial appointments-especially of district court judges-as part of his civil-rights policy, one that should inform his civil-rights legacy. These district judges embodied Eisenhower's earnest-but-not-activist approach to civil rights, which sits in stark contrast to that of Eisenhower's Supreme Court appointments, especially Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose outspoken nature struck Eisenhower as counterproductive. For Eisenhower, durable civil-rights progress came through incremental change backed by the rule of law, which judges could achieve through the steady interpretation and enforcement of statutes and the Constitution-to much greater effect than grand, moral pronouncements from presidents or judicial pronouncements from Supreme Courts. The district judges that Eisenhower appointed took that approach, and their appointment is as much the civil-rights policy of the Eisenhower administration as any rhetoric or government program.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.