Book on Hernandez v. Texas

“Colored Men and Hombres Aqui”: Hernández v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering (Michael A. Olivas, ed.), ARTE PUBLICO PRESS, 2006

This volume commemorates the 50th anniversary of an important but almost forgotten U.S. Supreme court case, Hernández v. Texas, 347 US 475 (1954), the major case involving Mexican Americans and jury selection, published just before Brown v. Board in the 1954 Supreme Court reporter. This landmark case, the first to be tried by Mexican American lawyers before the US Supreme Court, held that Mexican Americans were a discrete group for purposes of applying Equal Protection. Although the case was about discriminatory state jury selection and trial practices, it has been cited for many other civil rights precedents in the intervening 50 years. Even so, it has not been given the prominence it deserves, in part because it lives in the shadow of the more compelling Brown case. Containing papers presented at the Hernández at 50 conference which took place November 19, 2004 at the University of Houston, this book also contains source materials, trial briefs and some pictures from that time. Order at http://www.arte.uh.edu/view_book.aspx?isbn=1558854762

Hernandez website: http://www.law.uh.edu/hernandez50/homepage.html

For an order form, Download colored_men_and_hombres_aqu.pdf Download colored_men_04.pdf

KJ