A Parnassus Books bestseller.

A Sense of Justice

Keel’s newest book is his biography of the late Judge Gilbert S. Merritt. It places the long-time jurist of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in his comprehensive political and social context. Merritt was an early Kennedy Democrat in the South, a respected legal scholar, and lifelong opponent of the death penalty. To understand Merritt’s life and career, Hunt writes, is to know much about the political history of Tennessee and especially of modern Nashville.

Merritt was nominated to the Sixth Circuit bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Over 40-plus years on that bench, he was Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit and an influential member of the executive committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, by appointment of Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

The new biography from West Margin Press is based on extensive interviews with Merritt over the final year of his life and with 145 other individuals who knew him best. Included are stories of his childhood and family; his influential “circle of friends” in Nashville; his campaign for Congress in 1975; his elevation to the Sixth Circuit and his notable jurisprudence, and how Merritt came close in 1993 to being nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States during the Clinton administration.

“A beautiful and literate presentation of a complex and unique man.” —Jack May

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