Michael J. Klarman, author of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History, is one of the leading authorities on the history of civil rights law in the United States. In Unfinished Business, he illuminates the course of racial equality in America, revealing that we have made less progress than we like to think. Indeed, African Americans have had to fight for everything they have achieved. Klarman highlights a variety of social and political factors that have influenced the path of racial progress--wars, migrations, urbanization, shifting political coalitions--and he looks in particular at the contributions of law and of court decisions to American equality. The author argues that court decisions tend to reflect the racial mores of the times, which is why the Supreme Court has not been a heroic defender of the rights of racial minorities. And even when the Court has promoted progressive racial change, its decisions have often been unenforced, in part because severely oppressed groups rarely have the resources necessary to force the issue. Klarman also sheds light on the North/South dynamic and how it has influenced racial progress, arguing that as southerners have become more anxious about outside challenges to their system of white supremacy, they have acted in ways that eventually undermined that system. For example, as southern slave owners demanded greater guarantees for slavery from the federal government, they alienated northerners, who came to fear a slave power conspiracy that would interfere with their liberties. Unfinished Business offers an invaluable, succinct account of racial equality and civil rights throughout American history.

[美]邁剋爾·J.剋拉曼(Michael J. Klarman)，美國著名憲法史專傢。他在巴爾的摩長大，於賓夕法尼亞大學獲得學士和碩士學位，在牛津大學獲得哲學博士學位，又在斯坦福大學法學院獲得法學博士學位，曾任弗吉尼亞大學法學和曆史學教授，現為哈佛大學法學院終身教授。

2005年，剋拉曼以《從種族隔離到民權運動：最高法院與種族平等的抗爭》(From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality)獲得瞭班剋羅夫奬。他還著有《從櫃子到祭壇：法庭、抵製和同性婚姻的抗爭》(From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage)、《立法者的政變：美國憲法的製定》(The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution)等。