Samantha Barbas presents a long-overdue biography of the legendary civil liberties lawyer-a vital and contrary figure who both defended Ulysses and fawned over J. Edgar Hoover.

"Samantha Barbas delineates the life of famed lawyer and political advisor Morris Ernst, an early shaper of the American Civil Liberties Union. Today's fundamental challenges to free speech, expressive rights, and the exercise of political power make Ernst's battles to establish the cultural and legal norms of the twentieth century freshly interesting-particularly his role in framing the right to privacy. Barbas details Ernst's legendary free speech cases but also his manipulative ways and idiosyncratic and troubling political associations. A vital and conflicted man, Ernst was shaped strongly by the intersection of his legal ideas and the driving politics of his time"--