Law Commons^™

Constitutional Law-Fourteenth Amendment-Discrimination In Selection Of Grand Jurors, Alan C. Boyd S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant's conviction of murder was affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which rejected defendant's claim that discrimination in selection of the indicting grand jury had violated his constitutional rights. Defendant pointed out that the Negro proportion of grand jurors had uniformly been less than the ratio of Negroes to the total population of the county, and that on the past twenty-one lists the commissioners had consistently limited the number of Negroes to not more than one on each grand jury. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, held, reversed. Limitation of the number of Negroes on …

Constitutional Law-Congressional Primaries-Voting Rights Of Negroes, Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

The petitioner, Lonnie E. Smith, a Negro citizen of Harris County, Texas, brought suit for damages against election judges who refused to give him a ballot or to permit him to cast a ballot in the primary election of July 27, 1940, for the nomination of Democratic candidates for federal and state officers. The refusal was alleged to have been solely because of Smith's race and color and consequently violated sections 31 and 43 of title 8 of the United States Code by depriving Smith of rights secured under provisions of the Federal Constitution. The District Court of the United …

Torts - Wrongful Exclusion From An Elevator - Damages For Mental Pain And Humiliation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff's wife, a Caucasian, having business with a tenant on the fifteenth floor, entered defendant's elevator containing other whites. She and a Negro woman were directed by the operator to take an elevator in the rear of the store used for freight and Negro passengers; and being ignorant of this latter fact, she used this elevator. Asserting that she was wrongfully excluded from the elevator for white people and thereby was considered to be a negro by both whites and colored people, she claimed to have suffered mental anguish, humiliation, and physical suffering. Held, the defendant, while not a …

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 …

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.