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Why The Civil Rights Cases Belong In The Anti-Canon: Black Citizenship, The Fourteenth Amendment, And Judicial Interposition, Matthew Norman, Christopher Bryant

ConLawNOW

This essay analyzes the Supreme Court’s ruling in The Civil Rights Cases (1883) and surveys both contemporary and scholarly responses to it. Citizenship should mean something, and the Court’s ruling in The Civil Rights Cases invalidated much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the most ambitious and progressive civil rights legislation that Congress enacted prior to 1964. When the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dred Scott, Abraham Lincoln warned of a sequel that would nationalize slavery. While the Thirteenth Amendment eliminated the possibility of such a decision, Dred Scott is widely recognized as one of the Court’s …