Then to the Rock Let Me Fly: Luther Bohanon and Judicial Activism

This is a stirring biography of a courageous federal judge whose decisions on civil liberties and civil rights have had a national impact. Luther Bohanon, appointed to the Oklahoma District Court bench in 1961 by President John Kennedy, mandated the integration of Oklahoma City's public schools and ended segregation in housing. His rulings helped to eliminate beatings of inmates, overcrowding and other abuses in Oklahoma's prisons. Born in 1902, the farmboy-turned-lawyer and then jurist enjoined the Food and Drug Administration from banning the importation, by terminally ill cancer patients, of the unproven drug laetrile (a decision subsequently reversed). He also helped establish the right of Native Americans to sue for compensation for lands taken from them. Weaver, a lawyer who is now a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, limns a fiercely stubborn individualist whose unswerving adherence to the Constitution and to his conscience make him a beacon of enlightened jurisprudence. (Nov.)