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Articles 1 - 20 of 20
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Procedural Law, The Supreme Court, And The Erosion Of Private Rights Enforcement, Suzette M. Malveaux
Procedural Law, The Supreme Court, And The Erosion Of Private Rights Enforcement, Suzette M. Malveaux
Publications
No abstract provided.
Recovering Forgotten Struggles Over The Constitutional Meaning Of Equality, Helen Norton
Recovering Forgotten Struggles Over The Constitutional Meaning Of Equality, Helen Norton
Publications
No abstract provided.
The Keyes To Reclaiming The Racial History Of The Roberts Court, Tom I. Romero, Ii
The Keyes To Reclaiming The Racial History Of The Roberts Court, Tom I. Romero, Ii
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article advocates for a fundamental re-understanding about the way that the history of race is understood by the current Supreme Court. Represented by the racial rights opinions of Justice John Roberts that celebrate racial progress, the Supreme Court has equivocated and rendered obsolete the historical experiences of people of color in the United States. This jurisprudence has in turn reified the notion of color-blindness, consigning racial discrimination to a distant and discredited past that has little bearing to how race and inequality is experienced today. The racial history of the Roberts Court is centrally informed by the context and …
The Supreme Judicial Court In Its Fourth Century: Meeting The Challenge Of The "New Constitutional Revolution", Charles H. Baron
The Supreme Judicial Court In Its Fourth Century: Meeting The Challenge Of The "New Constitutional Revolution", Charles H. Baron
Charles H. Baron
In the mid-19th century, when the United States was confronted with daunting changes wrought by its expanding frontiers and the advent of the industrial revolution, its state supreme courts developed the principles of law which facilitated the nation's growth into the great continental power it became. First in influence among these state supreme courts was the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts-whose chief justice, Lemuel Shaw, came widely to be known as "America's greatest magistrate." It is this tradition that the court brings with it as it develops its place in the "new constitutional revolution" presently sweeping our state supreme courts. …
A Reluctant Apology For Plessy: A Response To Akhil Amar, Barry P. Mcdonald
A Reluctant Apology For Plessy: A Response To Akhil Amar, Barry P. Mcdonald
Pepperdine Law Review
A response to the article "Plessy v. Ferguson and the Anti-Canon," by Akhil Amar, published in the November 2011 issue of the "Pepperdine Law Review," is presented. Topics include an examination of Justice Henry Billings Brown's decision in the case, the constitutionality of segregating U.S. citizens by race, and the impact of public opinion on U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Plessy V. Ferguson And The Anti-Canon, Akhil Reed Amar
Plessy V. Ferguson And The Anti-Canon, Akhil Reed Amar
Pepperdine Law Review
The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which dealt with the constitutionality of racial segregation in the U.S. Topics include the application of precedent in controversial U.S. Supreme Court cases, when the U.S. Constitution can overrule a court decision, and dissenting judicial opinions.
Coming To Terms With Dred Scott: A Response To Daniel A. Farber, Paul Finkelman
Coming To Terms With Dred Scott: A Response To Daniel A. Farber, Paul Finkelman
Pepperdine Law Review
When thinking about Dred Scott, the issue is not how do we “rehabilitate” the opinion. The goal of scholarship here is to understand the opinion, place it in the context of its own time, and explain its enduring significance. After that, we may praise or damn it, and rehabilitate it or condemn it. No one today likes the Dred Scott opinion or the result. But, this article argues that Professor Daniel A. Farber is so incensed by the opinion that he vastly overstates its historical significance including incorrectly blaming Chief Justice Taney for causing the Civil War. This article rejects …
Yick Wo At 125: Four Simple Lessons For The Contemporary Supreme Court, Marie A. Failinger
Yick Wo At 125: Four Simple Lessons For The Contemporary Supreme Court, Marie A. Failinger
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
The 125th anniversary of Yick Wo v. Hopkins is an important opportunity to recognize the pervasive role of law in oppressive treatment of Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to reflect on four important lessons gleaned from Yick Wo. First, the Court should never lend justification to the evil of class discrimination, even if it has to decline to rule in a case. Second, where there is persistent discrimination against a minority group, the Court must be similarly persistent in fighting it. Third, the Court needs to take …
Williams V. Lee And The Debate Over Indian Equality, Bethany R. Berger
Williams V. Lee And The Debate Over Indian Equality, Bethany R. Berger
Michigan Law Review
Williams v. Lee (1959) created a bridge between century-old affirmations of the immunity of Indian territories from state jurisdiction and the tribal self-determination policy of the twentieth century. It has been called the first case in the modern era of federal Indian law. Although no one has written a history of the case, it is generally assumed to be the product of a timeless and unquestioning struggle of Indian peoples for sovereignty. This Article, based on interviews with the still-living participants in the case and on examination of the congressional records, Navajo council minutes, and Supreme Court transcripts, records, and …
"The Prejudice Of Caste": The Misreading Of Justice Harlan And The Ascendency Of Anticlassificaiton, Scott Grinsell
"The Prejudice Of Caste": The Misreading Of Justice Harlan And The Ascendency Of Anticlassificaiton, Scott Grinsell
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article reconsiders the familiar reading of Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson as standing for the principle of constitutional colorblindness by examining the significance of Harlan's use of the metaphor "caste" in the opinion. By overlooking Harlan's invocation of "caste," it argues that conservative proponents of anticlassification have reclaimed the opinion for "colorblindness," and buried a powerful statement of the antisubordination principle that is at the heart of our equality law. The Article begins by examining the emergence of a reading of the opinion as articulating a view of equality law based in anticlassification. The Article then returns …
An "Unintended Consequence": Dred Scott Reinterpreted, Sam Erman
An "Unintended Consequence": Dred Scott Reinterpreted, Sam Erman
Michigan Law Review
Austin Allen's monograph marks the 150th anniversary of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford with a revisionist interpretation of that oft-examined case. Many scholars have portrayed the case as a proslavery decision that fanned sectional fires. After all, the Court held that blacks were not U.S. citizens and that Congress was impotent to bar slavery in U.S. territories. Allen, by contrast, understands the case primarily as a judicial attempt to rationalize federal commerce and slavery jurisprudences. Part I argues that this ambitious reinterpretation enriches, but does not topple, existing Dred Scott historiography. In the case of the Court's citizenship …
Public Rights, Social Equality, And The Conceptual Roots Of The Plessy Challenge, Rebecca J. Scott
Public Rights, Social Equality, And The Conceptual Roots Of The Plessy Challenge, Rebecca J. Scott
Articles
This Article argues that the test case that gave rise to the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson is best understood as part of a wellestablished, cosmopolitan tradition of anticaste activism in Louisiana rather than as a quixotic effort that contradicted nineteenth-century ideas of the boundaries of citizens' rights. By drawing a dividing line between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social rights, on the other, the Supreme Court construed challenges to segregation as claims to a "social equality" that was beyond the scope of judicially cognizable rights. The Louisiana constitutional convention of 1867-68, however, had defined …
The Riddle Of Hiram Revels, Richard A. Primus
The Riddle Of Hiram Revels, Richard A. Primus
Articles
In 1870, a black man named Hiram Revels was named to represent Mississippi in the Senate. Senate Democrats objected to seating him and pointed out that the Constitution specifies that no person may be a senator who has not been a citizen of the United States for at least nine years. Before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the Democrats argued, Revels had not been a citizen on account of the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Thus, even if Revels were a citizen in 1870, he had held that status for only two years. …
Still Unfair, Still Arbitrary - But Do We Care?, Samuel R. Gross
Still Unfair, Still Arbitrary - But Do We Care?, Samuel R. Gross
Other Publications
Welcome. It is a pleasure to see everybody at this bright and cheery hour of the morning. My assignment is to try to give an overview of the status of the death penalty in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I will try to put that in the context of how the death penalty was viewed thirty years ago, or more, and maybe that will tell us something about how the death penalty will be viewed thirty or forty years from now.
History's Stories, Stephan Landsman
History's Stories, Stephan Landsman
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman
The Supreme Judicial Court In Its Fourth Century: Meeting The Challenge Of The "New Constitutional Revolution", Charles Baron
The Supreme Judicial Court In Its Fourth Century: Meeting The Challenge Of The "New Constitutional Revolution", Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
In the mid-19th century, when the United States was confronted with daunting changes wrought by its expanding frontiers and the advent of the industrial revolution, its state supreme courts developed the principles of law which facilitated the nation's growth into the great continental power it became. First in influence among these state supreme courts was the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts-whose chief justice, Lemuel Shaw, came widely to be known as "America's greatest magistrate." It is this tradition that the court brings with it as it develops its place in the "new constitutional revolution" presently sweeping our state supreme courts. …
The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation, David D. Meyer
The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation, David D. Meyer
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation by Charles A. Lofgren
Updating Statutory Interpretation, T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Updating Statutory Interpretation, T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Michigan Law Review
This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. Professor Aleinikoff examines in depth the first issue raised by Professor Farber. Using metaphors of the archeological and the nautical Professor Aleinikoff describes theories of originalism and their application to statutory interpretation. Concluding that there are nonoriginalist (or nonarcheological) elements implicit in these theories, he proceeds to consider how an explicitly nonoriginalist (or nautical) theory of interpretation might work He concludes by commenting on the application of such a theory to Patterson.
From False Paternalism To False Equality: Judicial Assaults On Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895, Frances Olsen
From False Paternalism To False Equality: Judicial Assaults On Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895, Frances Olsen
Michigan Law Review
This essay will examine the "equal treatment" versus "special treatment" for women issue as it arose in Illinois in the late nineteenth century. In 1869 the Illinois Supreme Court barred Myra Bradwell from the practice of law on the basis that she was a married woman, and in 1870 it reaffirmed its exclusion of women in In re Bradwell, the state decision the United States Supreme Court upheld in Bradwell v. Illinois. This denial of equal treatment to women, especially the concurring opinion by United States Supreme Court Justice Bradley, appears to many to represent paternalism at its …
Selective Incorporation Revisited, Jerold H. Israel
Selective Incorporation Revisited, Jerold H. Israel
Articles
In June 1960 Justice Brennan's separate opinion in Ohio ex re. Eaton v. Price' set forth what came to be the doctrinal foundation of the Warren Court's criminal procedure revolution. Justice Brennan advocated adoption of what is now commonly described as the "selective incorporation" theory of the fourteenth amendment. That theory, simply put, holds that the fourteenth amendment's due process clause fully incorporates all of those guarantees of the Bill of Rights deemed to be fundamental and thereby makes those guarantees applicable to the states. During the decade that followed Ohio ex re. Eaton v. Price, the Court found incorporated …