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Missouri Supreme Court; Decision; September Term 1937, Judge William F. Frank

Case Materials

No abstract provided.

Missouri Supreme Court; Respondant's Brief; May Term 1937

Case Materials

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - Race Segregation Ordinance - Effect Of Military Order Of Governor Issued For Same Purpose

Michigan Law Review

A "segregation ordinance" of Oklahoma City, prospective in nature, made it unlawful for any negro to occupy as a residence any house or building located in a block wherein a majority of the buildings used were occupied by white persons. The initial step in the segregation of races in the city occurred when the Governor issued a military order for the separation of the races, because it appeared that riot and bloodshed were imminent; such order to remain in effect until an ordinance was passed in lieu of the order. Held, the ordinance was an invalid exercise of the …

Circuit Court, Boone County, Missouri; Respondents Trial Brief; June Term 1936

Case Materials

No abstract provided.

Circuit Court, Boone County, Missouri; Respondents Return To The Alt. Writ Of Mandamus; April Term 1936

Case Materials

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law-Exclusion From Juries On Grounds Of Race And Color-Scottsboro Case

Michigan Law Review

A negro convicted of rape in one of the so-called "Scottsboro" cases moved to quash the indictment and the trial venire, alleging systematic exclusion of negroes from the grand and petit juries on the grounds of race and color. The trial court overruled the motions, and the Alabama Supreme Court sustained this decision, holding that the evidence failed to establish such exclusion. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, held, that the refusal to quash the indictment and trial venire was a denial of equal protection of the laws contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment, since the evidence on …

Constitutional Law - Discrimination Against Negroes - Control Of Party Membership, Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

The petitioner, R. R. Grovey, allegedly a citizen of the United States and of Texas, and possessing all the qualifications of a voter, was refused a ballot for a Democratic party primary because he was of the Negro race. Grovey demanded ten dollars damages from the respondent, Albert Townsend, the county clerk, a state officer. The Revised Civil Statutes of Texas provide for primary elections and regulate absentee voting. When Grovey demanded of Townsend an absentee ballot it was refused in virtue of a resolution of the state Democratic convention of Texas, adopted May 24, 1932, as follows:

"Be it …

Segregation Of Residences Of Negroes, Arthur T. Martin

Michigan Law Review

Most white people do not want Negroes for neighbors. For many years this race prejudice alone seemed adequate to secure the type of domiciliary segregation which the majority desired. In recent years, however, Negro incursions into so-called white territory have become more numerous, and white landowners have resorted to legal devices to secure race exclusiveness in residential sections. In considering the validity of these segregation devices the courts have not ordinarily purported to take into account the social desirability of the end sought. No examination has been made of the factors back of Negro migration into white territory. No thought …

Primary Elections And The Constitution, Luther Harris Evans

Michigan Law Review

Recent attempts in Texas and elsewhere to exclude Negro voters from primary elections reveal the unsettled state of constitutional law in this field. Two struggles of principle, individualism versus police power and States' rights versus nationalism, are outlined in the judicial opinions reviewed below under the following headings: (I) Basis of state power over primaries; (II) Limitations on state power over primaries imposed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; (III) Basis of state power over primaries for nominating United States Senators and Representatives; and (IV) Basis of national power over primaries for nominating United States Senators and Representatives.

Evidence-The Unchastity Of A Female Witness As A Ground For Impeaching Her Veracity

Michigan Law Review

The underlying question which we propose to consider is this: Has the trait of chastity any such definite correlation with that of veracity that courts are justified in using the former as a criterion of the latter? It must be apparent from even a brief survey of the decisions in this field, and the reasons given therefor, that on this question the courts are swayed far more than ordinarily by their emotional reactions. Buttressed with sentiments that cannot fail to stir the heart of the male in any monogamous community and riveted with references to religion as well as the …

Criminal Law And Procedure - Evidence - Presumptions

Michigan Law Review

The Alien Land Law of California forbids the acquisition of real property for agricultural purposes by aliens ineligible to citizenship; amendment 9b provides that proof of the acquisition of land by the defendant and of his being a member of a race ineligible to United States citizenship raises the presumption of ineligibility to citizenship against the defendant, and the burden is on him to show citizenship or eligibility thereto. Defendants, an American and a Japanese, were indicted for conspiracy to violate the act. No evidence as to the birthplace of the Japanese was adduced by either side, and both were …

Constitutional Law - Due Process And Equal Protection - Right Of Counsel

Michigan Law Review

The Scottsboro cases decided by the Supreme Court at the present term raise several interesting constitutional questions. The judgments were assailed on the ground that they were violative of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment in three respects: (1) that the negroes were tried by juries from which members of their race were systematically excluded; (2) that they were not accorded a fair, impartial and deliberate trial; (3) that due process was denied because the right of counsel, with the usual incidents of consultation and adequate preparation for trial, was lacking. While the Supreme Court …

Schools-Race Segregation-Constitutional Law

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Report On Crime And The Foreign Born, Joseph Cohen

Michigan Law Review

That the foreign born, more than the native born, tend to run afoul of the law, especially with respect to the more serious offenses, is a popular doctrine which critical opinion in the field of criminology has long been inclined either to qualify as to essential details or to contradict in toto. Twenty years back the Federal Immigration Commission reported that all the evidence then available indicated a lesser criminality on the part of the immigrant group as a whole. Succeeding studies have supported this conclusion. That an adverse view of the foreign born should persist in the face of …

Recognition Of Validity And Incidents Of Marriages Between Blacks And Whites, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Powell Writings

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Disparity Of Privilege And Discrimination

Michigan Law Review

The equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment provides that no person or class of persons shall be denied the same protection of the laws that others in the same place and under like circumstances enjoy. But it has been said that "equality and not identity of privileges and rights is what is guaranteed to the citizen" by the fourteenth amendment. People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 45 Am. Rep. 232. Any law which in terms provides for identity of privileges and rights, but which operates in such a manner as to produce political or economic inequality. because of …

Constitutional Law -- Equal Protection Clause -- Discrimination, Fowler V. Harper

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Restraints On Alienation-Restrictive Covenants-Racial Discrimination

Michigan Law Review

Three cases decided in 1925 in three widely separated parts of the United States, namely, California, Michigan, and the District of Columbia, raise the question: How far may one give legal effect to his racial prejudices through the medium of covenants and conditions inserted in wills and inter vivos conveyances? An attempt was made in each of these cases to restrict the use or sale of the property involved to white persons or to deny it to colored persons. Two of the cases upheld the restriction; one declared it invalid.

Constitutional Validity Of Statute Barring Negroes From Primary Elections

Michigan Law Review

The history of suffrage in the South during the last thirty-five years has been largely a story of the adoption and administration of discriminatory regulations devised to catch the negro without debarring any considerable number of white people. This legal disfranchisement has been accomplished by property or educational qualifications possessed generally by whites but not by negroes, or by giving a great deal of discretion to election and registration officials, who, understanding what is expected of them, find quite uniformly that the negroes do not meet the requirements while the white applicants generally do. How the letter of the Fifteenth …

Aliens-Right To Own Or Lease Land-Effect Of "Equal Protection" Clause

Michigan Law Review

Right of alien residents under the "equal protection" clause of- the federal Constitution received further delimitation in the Alien Land Law Cases, decisions handed down last November. Terrace v. Thompson (U. S. 1923), Adv. Ops. 35, and Porterfield v. Webb, Adv. Ops. 42. In the former case the court was concerned with a Washington statute passed to enforce a provision in the Washington constitution that forbade the ownership of land by any aliens other than those who had in good faith declared their intention to become citizens. The California statute in the second case differed chiefly in limiting its …

Amendments To The Constitution Of Missouri Proposed By The Constitutional Convention, 1922-1923, And The Address To The People : To Be Submitted At Special Election To Be Held Tuesday, February 26, 1924

Missouri Constitutional Sections Related to Race and Education

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law--Minimum Wage Law For Women As A Violation Of The Fifth Amendment

Michigan Law Review

The advance of so-called social legislation within the last several decades has furnished an intensely interesting period in constitutional and industrial development. The last skirmish with the fast-disappearing forces of logic and anachronistic formalism seems to have been fought in the recent case of Adkins v. Lyons (April 9, 1923), U. S. Adv. Ops. 795 and 796.