Johnstone, Quintin

English

Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository

REVIEWS
said in a moment of revealing retrospect: "The hard months at Nuremberg
were spent in the most enduring and constructive work of my life."'25
Perhaps Jackson never should have been a judge. It is at least true that his
chief talents were not judicial ones, and it is questionable whether coming
generations of lawyers and judges will put a high premium on his judicial
achievement. Almost certainly, when future critics have discounted Jackson's
verbal brilliance they will not find in the residue a contribution comparable to
that of Hugo Black, the judge whom Jackson apparently regarded as "the
mind and heart of an opposition party. '26 For present purposes it is sufficient
to recognize that Jackson's last book is the work of a man who felt he should
write about the judicial process but had very little to say.27 At all events, it is
a misnomer to describe the book, in a lawyer's poetic way, as "a remarkable
testament"28 or even as "a remarkable legacy. '29 There are in the book a few
sentences of acrimony which, for good or bad, are reminiscent of a brilliant
advocate. But the rest is silence.
Louis H. POLLAKt
POLITICS, PLANNING, AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST: THE CASE OF PUBLIC
HOUSING IN CHICAGO. By Martin Meyerson and Edward C. Banfield. Glen-
coe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1955., Pp. 353. $5.00.
IT is common knowledge that racial segregation is not restricted to the South.
Every major industrial city in the North has a separate all-Negro community
characterized by high population density, a very heavy percentage of slum
dwellings, and steady expansion into whatever contiguous areas it can pene-
trate. The Northern pattern of segregation is much less 'severe than that of
the South, but it has created serious problems in many areas-among them,
housing. Rapid increase in the Negro population of Northern metropolitan
25. Dean, Mr. Justice Jackson: His Contribution at Nuremberg, 41 A.B.A.J. 912
(1955).
26. Jaffe, supra note 23, at 986. The philosophic differences between the two were
profound; so, too-at least for a time-were the personal differences. Jackson, it will be
remembered, felt that Black took advantage of Jackson's absence at Nuremberg to lobby
against Jackson's elevation to the post of Chief Justice. Out of this seems to have grown
Jackson's ill-founded public attack on Black for not disqualifying himself in Jewell Ridge
Coal Corp. v. Local 6167, United Mine Workers, 325 U.S. 161. (1945). See RODELL, NINE
MEN 282 (1955); Frank, Disqualification of Judges, 56 YALE L.J. 605 (1947); Jaffe,
supra note 23, at 986-88.
27. The book's many references to and quotations from Justice Cardozo suggest that
Jackson had taken the great lectures on The Nature of the Judicial Process as his model.
28. Griswold, The High Court in a Democratic System, N.Y. Herald-Tribune, Book
Review Section, July 10, 1955, p. 2.
29. Calm, Balance in the Scales of Justice, N.Y. Times, Book Review Section, July
10,19 55, p. 1.
tAssistant Professor of Law, Yale Law School.
1956]
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
centers, caused in large part by continuing migration from the South, accentu-
ates these problems. In the past fifteen years, for example, Chicago's Negro
population has grown from 275,000 to 625,000.
Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest illustrates some of the frictions
that segregation is causing in the North, in a detailed account of the public
housing site selection fight that took place in Chicago between 1949 and 1951.
The authors are both social scientists now teaching at major universities; one
of them, Meyerson, was intimately associated with the site selection contro-
versy as former head of the Chicago Housing Authority's Planning Division.
Under the Federal Housing Act of 1949,1 Chicago had a chance to secure
a heavy federal subsidy for as many as 40,OCO public housing units. Formal
approval of the projects had to be given by the Chicago Housing Authority, an
independent municipal corporation whose commissioners were appointed by
the Mayor; the Chicago City Council; and the Federal Public Housing Ad-
ministration. Bitter disagreements about site selection developed between the
Authority and the City Council; and before a final decision was reached, the
Mayor, the Public Housing Administration, property owners' associations,
religious leaders, racial organizations, newspapers, and a miscellany of other
groups were drawn into the fight.
The basic site selection problem was whether or not the new projects were
to be located outside the existing Negro area. The Authority and its supporters
favored sites largely outside the area. These would have enabled most of the
construction to be on previously vacant lands, displacing a minimum of persons
and adding to the total volume of housing in a city with a serious shortage of
low rental residential units. Adequate vacant tracts did not exist inside the
Negro community. Also, projects outside the Negro area would increase the
possibility that a substantial percentage of white families would occupy the
new dwellings; the Authority believed that public housing should not be solely
for Negroes, and that the projects should be racially integrated.
The Authority's opponents objected to locating the projects in white com-
munities because they feared that it would mean a heavy influx of Negro
families, and result in the surrounding area also becoming Negro. The pattern
of segregation in Chicago, as in Northern cities generally, is that whites will
not live in the same neighborhood with Negroes. The whites may at first resist
the influx of Negroes; but if they come in anyway, the whites will move away.
The core of the opposition to the Authority was a small bloc of aldermen who
controlled the City Council. These aldermen were politically obligated to sup-
port public housing in the abstract, but opposed to its being located in their
own wards. However crude their methods, they undoubtedly represented the
wishes of their wards and probably of most Chicagoans.
The Authority, feeling itself strong enough to defy the aldermen, decided
to make a public fight on the issue. After two years of well-publicized hear-
ings, investigations, reports, and maneuvering by competing groups, the
Authority lost. Sites were approved for a large volume of new housing, but
1. 63 STAT. 439 (1949) (codified in scattered sections of 12, 42 U.S.C.).
[Vol. 65
REVIEWS
most of it was in Negro communities, and most of it required the demolition
of existing dwelling units.
In an objective hindsight analysis, Meyerson and Banfield indicate that the
Authority made serious tactical mistakes. The fight probably should not have
been a public one; in any event it should not have been allowed to drag on as
long as it did, for many supporters of the Authority lost interest, and so did
the newspapers and the public at large. In all likelihood, more could have been
gained by a private compromise agreement with the aldermen. The Authority
expected strong support from Negro groups, who in fact remained rather
apathetic. The Authority overestimated the strength and personality of the
Mayor and underestimated the strength of the aldermen. Finally, the repre-
sentatives of the Authority were not persons who acted, thought or talked in
terms that the aldermen could respect or trust; instead, they had the values
and mannerisms of high-minded career executives from an intellectual and
social class alien to the ward politicians who ran the city. This discrepancy is
not uncommon in American government, particularly between appointees and
elected representatives. Although in an ideal society there may be no question
about the incidental traits of government officials, the unfortunate fact is that
in Chicago local government the personality of the career intellectual is not
conducive to political success either by combat or by compromise.
This book suggests a number of generalizations about public housing in this
country. The moral of the story it tells is that planning of public housing is
a meaningless intellectual exercise unless political reactions to the plans are
effectively anticipated. The book points out that opposition to public housing
can be expected from the very slum areas and slum dwellers that it seeks to
benefit. Slum communities have vested commercial, political and religious in-
terests that are antagonistic to public housing because they are weakened by
the dislocations it brings. And deep neighborhood attachments exist in even
the most squalid areas, often giving rise to vigorous resistance to change.
Among the interesting incidental information the book offers are the facts that
small public housing projects are more expensive per unit to build and manage
than are large ones, and more likely to decay into slums; and that resentments
against the management of public housing projects have developed that are
more intense than the customary one between landlords and tenants of private-
ly owned premises.
On the racial aspect of housing Meyerson and Banfield have some encourag-
ing observations to make. In discussing the reasons why whites are so opposed
to Negroes moving into white neighborhoods, the authors noted not merely
feelings of superiority over dark skinned people and fears of property values
deteriorating, but an antipathy to Negroes because of their lower social status. 2
An implication of this finding may be that the Negro in Chicago and other
big Northern cities will be able to progress in the same way that other ethnic
minorities have. With improvements in their class position-and the Negro
class position is improving-prejudice and inequality may decline and housing
2. Pp. 103-04.
1956]
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
segregation gradually disappear. The Negroes may be the mid-twentieth cen-
tury version of the German, Scandinavian, Irish, Bohemian, Polish and Italian
minorities that came before them. If this is so, the future of segregated housing
in Northern urban centers is dependent on all the factors, such as occupation,
income and education, that condition the social status of Negroes. And the
location and segregated nature of public housing may in many places be de-
pendent on these same factors.
QUINTIN JOHNSTONEt
MONOPOLY IN AMERICA. By Walter Adams and Horace M. Gray. New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1955. Pp. xv, 221. $3.50.
"THE Government as Promoter," the subtitle of this, little volume, supplies
the key to the authors' thesis that government today "frequently puts together
the very power concentrates which the antitrust authorities are later called
upon to break asunder."' This thesis is tested in five fields of governmental
activity: public utilities regulation, tax policies, defense procurement, surplus
property disposal and atomic energy. In each area the authors find that gov-
ernmental power has been used to promote rather than to dissipate monopolies.
2
Messrs. Adams and Gray quote Scripture in support of the position that
"among all the devices used by government to promote monopoly, public
utility . . . regulation is in some respects perhaps the worst."3 They recom-
mend a gradual transition toward unbridled competition in trucking, shipping
and air transport, suggesting that governmental activity in these fields should
be confined to maintaining safety and to enforcing the antitrust laws so as to
maintain a maximum degree of competition. 4 And they urge a drastic reversal
of the federal policy that promotes monopoly in television, notwithstanding the
limitations of technology.
In dealing with tax policies,6 the authors inveigh against depletion deduc-
tions because they "accrue primarily to large integrated manufacturing firms," 7
and accelerated amortization because it is "a boon to a relatively few large
corporations." s They also criticize the tax incentives to financing by retention
tVisiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School.
1. P. vii.
2. The authors state in a footnote in the preface that they use the word "monopoly"
not in the "dictionary sense" but to denote an industry situation where one or a group of
firms "possess substantial economic power." P. vii. This use of the word monopoly was
disconcerting to this reader; it could seriously mislead the unwary.
3. P. 39.
4. P. 61.
5. P. 52.
6. C. IV.
7. P. 83.
& P. 87.
[Vol. 65


Meyerson and Banfield: Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest: The Case of Public Housing in Chicago

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