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Book Review: 

Patrick E. Higginbotham, Conceptual Rigor: A Cabin for the Rhetoric of Heroism (reviewing Jack Bass’s Unlikely Heroes), 59 TEXAS L. REV. 1329 (1981). 

Jack Bass’s book surveys the important role judges on the Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit played in the civil rights movement.   Judge Higginbotham agrees that Bass’s unlikely heroes played an immensely positive role in reforming society and wiping out the manifestly unjust treatment of black Americans.  However, precisely because the moral case for civil rights was so strong, Higginbotham suggests that judges today may be tempted to embrace the activist model of adjudication that was deployed in these cases.  This, Higginbotham argues, would be a mistake.  Indeed, the very justification for having federal judges with life tenure depends on the notion of limited judicial powers.  The image of judges as heroes must not blind us to the reality that judges administer the rule of law in courts of limited jurisdiction.