scholarly journals Reframing Black Southerners’ Experiences in the Courts, 1865–1950

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 1113-1140
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Southern State ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Civil Cases ◽  
Black Defendants

In civil cases that took place in southern courts from the end of the Civil War to the mid-twentieth century, black men and women frequently chose to bring litigation and then negotiated the white-dominated legal system to shape their cases and assert rights. In some ways, these civil cases were diametrically opposite from the criminal cases of black defendants who did not choose to enter a courtroom and often received unequal justice. However, this article draws on almost 2,000 cases involving black litigants in eight state supreme courts across the South between 1865 to 1950 to argue that in both civil and criminal cases African Americans were at times shaping their cases and fighting for their rights, as well as obtaining decisions that aligned with the interests of white elites. Southern state courts during the era of Jim Crow were thus spaces for negotiating for rights and sites of white domination, in both criminal and civil cases.

Fighting for Rights in the Courts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Litigation ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Southern State ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Civil Cases

Chapter 8 traces African Americans’ continuing civil litigation in southern courts from 1921 to 1950. Beginning in the 1920s, African Americans began to litigate a wider range of types of civil cases against whites in southern state supreme courts. Black litigants were no longer forced to rely so heavily on stereotypes and claims of ignorance and vulnerability to win a case. More and more of black litigants’ seemingly ordinary appellate civil cases protested intimidation and violence against African Americans or made claims for larger groups of African Americans, beyond just the individuals litigating the suits. A few cases even directly challenged discriminatory racial regimes, at times using the techniques they had used to win other kinds of civil cases over the past decades. Although some of these cases were orchestrated by racial justice organizations like the NAACP, many others were brought by individual African Americans.

Let Us Grow Strong by Organization and Earnest Cooperation

2018 ◽  
pp. 135-157
Author(s):  
Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
National Leaders

This chapter focuses on the formation of national civil rights organizations in Boston and how they confronted the rising tide of Jim Crow in the final decade of the nineteenth century. Through these organizations, black men and women merged local political concerns with a broader movement for racial equality. This chapter pays particular attention to the Boston black community’s response to the rise in southern lynching. In doing so, it expands the historical narrative that has focused on anti-lynching during the 1890s as a product of the actions of central national leaders.

Part III Structure of State Government, 10 The State Judicial Branch

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Williams Robert F
Keyword(s):  
State Government ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Adequate Funding ◽  
State And Local Government ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Advisory Opinions

This chapter discusses the differences between the federal and state judiciary. Many state judges are elected through a variety of mechanisms. The workload of state supreme courts has evolved over the years from a private-law orientation to more constitutional law and public policy kinds of cases. In addition, state courts exercise a number of nonadjudicatory powers such as rulemaking on practice and procedure before the courts and regulation of lawyers. Some state courts have the authority to issue advisory opinions and answer certified questions, and some of them have asserted certain inherent powers such as to require adequate funding levels. State courts also retain the power to develop common law doctrine, as well as to resolve disputes among state and local government officials and agencies in ways that rarely involve the federal judiciary. State courts are also not bound by the rigid federal doctrines of standing, mootness, and ripeness.

Federal Constitutional Guarantees of the States: Section 106 and Appeals to the Privy Council from State Supreme Courts

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-374
Author(s):  
Christopher D. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Case Law ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
High Court ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
Recent Statement ◽  
The Subject

The abolition of all appeals from the High Court to the Privy Council, coupled with the High Court's recent statement that it no longer regards itself as bound by Privy Council decisions, highlights the fact that appeals still lie, in many matters of State jurisdiction, from State Supreme Courts direct to the Privy Council. In this article, Mr Gilbert is primarily concerned to examine the extent to which section 106 of the Commonwealth Constitution may provide protection for these “direct” appeals. To this end, Mr Gilbert examines what case-law exists on section 106, and attempts to place the section in perspective in relation to the rest of the Constitution. The difficult (and largely unexplored) relationship between section 106 and section 51 is considered, to discover the possible reaches of Commonwealth legislative power with respect to the subject-matter protected by section 106. The position of “direct” appeals within the States’ constitutional structures is looked at, in order to determine the possible ambit of whatever protection is offered by section 106, and finally, Mr Gilbert analyses the recent comments by Mr Justice Murphy that the abolition of Privy Council appeals from the High Court has meant the consequential demise of “direct” appeals from State courts.

The Influence of Animal Advocacy Groups in State Courts of Last Resort

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Steven Tauber
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Empirical Testing ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Advocacy Organization ◽  
Animal Advocacy ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

AbstractSince the 1970s, animal advocacy groups have attempted to improve the treatment of non-human animals by influencing public opinion and lobbying for legislation that protects animals. Empirical assessments of these efforts have reported mixed results. Animal advocacy groups also use litigation as a means of improving the treatment of nonhuman animals, but there has been limited empirical testing of the effectiveness of animal advocacy litigation. To fill this gap in the literature, this study examines the 188 animal law cases decided in state supreme courts from 1973 through 2005. It looks specifically at whether the participation of an animal advocacy organization increases the chance of a favorable decision, while controlling for legal and political influences on case outcomes. Logistic regression reveals that the presence of animal advocacy groups does not exert a statistically significant impact on case outcomes. Further analysis demonstrates, however, that animal advocacy groups are significantly more likely than nongroup litigators to pursue cases that are difficult to win.

scholarly journals Race–Crime Congruency Effects Revisited: Do We Take Defendants' Sexual Orientation Into Account?

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher D. Petsko ◽  
Galen V. Bodenhausen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
White Men ◽  
Juror Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Crime Type ◽  
Black Defendants

Decades ago, social psychologists documented a juror decision-making bias called the race–crime congruency effect: a tendency to condemn Black men more than White men for stereotypically Black crimes but to do the reverse for stereotypically White crimes. We conducted two high-powered experiments ( N = 2,520) to see whether this pattern replicates and to examine whether it is attenuated when the defendant is gay. When participants reported on what the average American juror would do (Experiment 1), we observed greater harshness toward Black defendants accused of stereotypically Black crimes but not the previously documented reversal for stereotypically White crimes. Defendant sexual orientation did not moderate this pattern. When participants reported their own judgments about the same criminal cases (Experiment 2), they expressed greater harshness toward White (vs. Black) defendants and toward heterosexual (vs. gay) defendants. These effects were not moderated by crime type. Implications for the race–crime congruency effect are discussed.

Challenges to the Impartiality of State Supreme Courts: Legitimacy Theory and “New-Style” Judicial Campaigns

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES L. GIBSON
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Activity ◽  
Free Speech Rights

Institutional legitimacy is perhaps the most important political capital courts possess. Many believe, however, that the legitimacy of elected state courts is being threatened by the rise of politicized judicial election campaigns and the breakdown of judicial impartiality. Three features of such campaigns, the argument goes, are dangerous to the perceived impartiality of courts: campaign contributions, attack ads, and policy pronouncements by candidates for judicial office. By means of an experimental vignette embedded in a representative survey, I investigate whether these factors in fact compromise the legitimacy of courts. The survey data indicate that campaign contributions and attack ads do indeed lead to a diminution of legitimacy, in courts just as in legislatures. However, policy pronouncements, even those promising to make decisions in certain ways, have no impact whatsoever on the legitimacy of courts and judges. These results are strongly reinforced by the experiment's ability to compare the effects of these campaign factors across institutions (a state Supreme Court and a state legislature). Thus, this analysis demonstrates that legitimacy is not obdurate and that campaign activity can indeed deplete the reservoir of goodwill courts typically enjoy, even if the culprit is not the free-speech rights the U.S. Supreme Court announced in 2002.

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