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Why The Supreme Court Lied About Plessy, David S. Bogen
Why The Supreme Court Lied About Plessy, David S. Bogen
Faculty Scholarship
This article examines the citation in Plessy of a dozen cases that the Court said held racial segregation statutes in transport to be constitutional. It argues that none of those twelve cases upheld a segregation statute, but were largely decisions upholding decisions by the carrier under the common law. Justice Brown knew that the cases did not uphold segregation statutes, but he went ahead and used them to bury opposition under the weight of precedent. He knew that he was unlikely to be challenged, and he believed that the common law and the Constitution involved the same principles. The conflation …
Judicial Review Of Thirteenth Amendment Legislation: 'Congruence And Proportionality' Or 'Necessary And Proper'?, William M. Carter Jr.
Judicial Review Of Thirteenth Amendment Legislation: 'Congruence And Proportionality' Or 'Necessary And Proper'?, William M. Carter Jr.
Articles
The Thirteenth Amendment has relatively recently been rediscovered by scholars and litigants as a source of civil rights protections. Most of the scholarship focuses on judicial enforcement of the Amendment in lawsuits brought by individuals. However, scholars have paid relatively little attention as of late to the proper scope of congressional action enforcing the Amendment. The reason, presumably, is that it is fairly well settled that Congress enjoys very broad authority to determine what constitutes either literal slavery or, to use the language of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., a "badge or incident of slavery" falling within the Amendment's …