Pitiful Plaintiffs: Child Welfare Litigation and the Federal Courts. By Susan Gluck Mezey. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. 209p. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-217
Author(s):  
William T. Gormley
Keyword(s):  
Continuity Of Care ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Family Services ◽  
University Of Pittsburgh ◽  
Abuse And Neglect ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union

In 1988 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), on behalf of B. H., a 17-year- old youth in foster care, and nearly 20,000 other children forced to live outside their home because of abuse and neglect. Attorneys accused the DCFS, responsible for pro- tecting and placing such children, with violations of Illinois statutes and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. B. H., for example, had been placed in ten different settings despite clear evidence that children require continuity of care for their emotional growth.

Into Federal District Court

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-143
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Federal District ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
District Court ◽  
Jersey City ◽  
Federal District Court ◽  
Police Powers ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
New Vision ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union

This chapter recounts the federal district court injunction proceeding instituted by the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to stop Jersey City from denying leafletting rights and public-speaking permits. Revealing the hearing’s nastiness, the chapter shows that the trial had legal significance beyond exposing Mayor Hague’s misdeeds, as it tested whether Jersey City’s claim of traditional municipal police powers against alleged CIO communists or the ACLU’s new vision of nationally protected speech and assembly rights for workers would prevail, and indeed, whether federal courts would accept jurisdiction. With law in flux, the chapter concludes, the district court broke new ground by assuming jurisdiction, rejecting Jersey City’s old legal vision, embracing new ACLU views, and enjoining Jersey City as requested.

Gender, Protection, and the Courts, 1895–1907

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Reproductive Capacity ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
Freedom Of Contract ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
Gender Based

This chapter discusses how the courts shaped protective policy from the 1890s to 1907. During this period, state and federal courts began a legal conversation about state protective laws. In court, challengers relied on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; they embraced freedom of contract and also cited the amendment's equal protection clause. Meanwhile, defenders gave wide latitude to the police power, the state's power to protect the health and welfare of its citizens. Throughout the era, the legal system imposed a discussion of gender. In cases that involved women workers, decisions that upset protective laws defended equal status for women. On the other hand, decision that upheld single-sex laws explored the role of sexual difference, mentioned women's reproductive capacity, and linked hours limits to the good of posterity and the welfare of society. Thereafter, judicial opinion steered states' attorneys—and the reformers who backed protective labor laws—into gender-based strategies.

Street Fight and Media Fight

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-109
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Police Powers ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
The Media ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union

This chapter traces the political and media battle that unfolded 1937-38 over Jersey City’s denial of public speaking permits to the Committee for Industrial Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, and supporters, including a few women. It shows how the media dominated popular understanding of the controversy by projecting rival discourses of democracy versus dictatorship and law and order versus subversive communism, temporarily obscuring legal questions about municipal police powers, labor law, and free speech that federal courts were on the verge of deciding. The chapter illustrates how the struggle intensified. Mayor Hague staged extravagant anticommunist “Americanism” rallies against the CIO with broad local support, while an outside pro-CIO left-labor coalition denounced Hague as a dictator in Popular Front language of antifascism and working-class Americanism.

Workers against the City

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Federal District ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
District Court ◽  
Jersey City ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Police Powers ◽  
Municipal Law ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union

This book contributes to legal and labor history by reinterpreting the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hague v. CIO (1939) decision, which upheld a federal district court injunction prohibiting Jersey City boss Frank Hague from obstructing workers from the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) and allies in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from meeting in urban public places. The case involved speech and assembly freedoms, rights essential for CIO workers’ organizing efforts, but, as the book shows, these rights were submerged under municipal police powers to preserve public order until the court brought them under federal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment in Hague. Revising the conventional view, the book argues that Hague was more than simply a civil liberties victory for workers over a dictatorial, antilabor city boss. Drawing on new evidence in city archives, CIO records, trial transcripts, newspaper reports, and Jersey City court filings, as well as traditional sources in ACLU records and anti-Hague literature, the book demonstrates that the Hague-versus-CIO controversy emanated more from shifts in the labor movement from craft to industrial unionism, in municipal law, in urban police practices, in the politics of anticommunism and antifascism, and especially in the Supreme Court’s “civil liberties revolution.” With women and African Americans on the periphery, the book concludes, male CIO workers initiated the case, but Hague ultimately benefitted outdoor protests more than it benefitted labor speech.

The U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-178
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
District Court ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Jurisdiction ◽  
The U.S

This chapter traces Hague’s appeal through the Third Circuit Court of Appeals into the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, showing how the Hughes court’s inner dynamics explain affirmation of the district court injunction. Observing flux in court personnel and law, the chapter shows that both courts embraced the contemporaneous civil liberties revolution by defending worker speech and assembly rights, but it reveals the Supreme Court as divided over constitutional logic. Justice Owen Roberts’s plurality opinion upheld speech and assembly rights under the Fourteenth Amendment privileges and immunities clause, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s concurrence incorporated the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment due-process clause, and dissenters rejected federal jurisdiction. The ruling reflected the contentious evolution of civil liberties jurisprudence, not antiboss or labor law politics.

Judicial Review of State Laws: The Meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy E. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Early Years ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Due Process Of Law ◽  
The Republic

This chapter examines the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in order to determine what stance federal courts should take toward state laws. The original Constitution contained several explicit restrictions on state power. In the early years of the Republic, federal courts actively scrutinized state enactments to ensure they did not violate these expressed prohibitions, especially the Contracts Clause. When it came to legislation not implicating these prohibitions, however, the courts deferred to states in their exercise of their police power. The chapter first considers what the term “privileges or immunities” encompasses before discussing the Supreme Court decision in the so-called Slaughter-House Cases, which set aside the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. It then looks at the Due Process Clauses and shows that the due process of law includes judicial review.

scholarly journals Liberty, Equality and the Right to Marry under the Fourteenth Amendment

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-262
Author(s):  
Ian Loveland
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Right

Abstract The legitimacy of recent judgments in the Supreme Court, lower federal courts and State courts which have extended the scope of the Due Process and/or Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment has been a fiercely contested controversy in legal and political circles in the USA. The controversy has been especially sharp in relation to the question of same sex marriage, and specifically whether it is within State competence to refuse to allow same sex couples to marry under State law. This paper explores that legitimation controversy through a multi-contextual analysis of the Supreme Court’s starkly divided judgment in Obergefell v Hodges (2015), in which a bare majority of the Court concluded that a State ban on same sex marriage was incompatible with the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This paper critiques both the majority and dissenting opinions, and suggests that while one might applaud the substantive conclusion the Court has reached, the reasoning offered by the majority suffers from several obvious weaknesses both in narrow doctrinal terms and from the broader perspective of safeguarding the Court from well-founded criticism that it is overstepping the bounds of its legitimate constitutional role.

The Civil Liberties Lobby: a Comparative Analysis

1975 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Benewick
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
National Council ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Due Process Of Law ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Rights Issues

A DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC OF BOTH THE AMERICAN CIVIL Liberties Union and the National Council for Civil Liberties (hereafter ACLU and NCCL) is their attempt to be comprehensive in coverage. Both organizations are concerned with spectrums of civil liberties questions and civil rights issues at different levels of discourse and practice. These may range from the promotion and protection of freedom of speech and assembly as fundamental rights to their particularist application in regard to demonstrators and demonstrations, from insuring due process of law to seeking equality before the law, from advocating citizens' rights for more information from government to protecting their rights to privacy. They may also be involved in issues that are not concerned with civil liberties, a priori, but have implications for civil liberties. On any given question, there may be other civil liberties spokesmen with whom they may cooperate, compete or confront. In carrying out their brief both the ACLU and the NCCL engage in public campaigns, litigation, lobbying, case work, direct representations, educational and research activities.

The Due Process Right to a Safe and Humane Environment for Patients in State Custody: The Voluntary/Involuntary Distinction

1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 339-362
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Kellogg
Keyword(s):  
Patient Safety ◽  
Staff Member ◽  
Suicide Risk ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Psychiatric Facility ◽  
State Custody ◽  
Staffing Levels ◽  
State Psychiatric ◽  
Deliberate Indifference

In December 1995, the Eighth Circuit decided Kennedy v. Schafer, holding that a teenage patient who committed suicide while under treatment at a state psychiatric facility had a constitutionally protected liberty interest in a safe and humane environment under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if her status changed from voluntary to involuntary during the course of her admission. The fifteen year old patient, Kathleen Kennedy, had been identified as a suicide risk, and had been placed on “Protective Suicide Precautions,” which required a designated staff member to keep her in constant eyesight and to interact with her at fifteen to twenty minute intervals. Despite these stringent requirements for supervision and contact, Kathleen was found dead in her room more than two hours after her last contact with a staff member. Her parents brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against state and hospital officials, alleging that chronic understaffing and falsification of the records used to determine staffing levels amounted to a pattern of deliberate indifference to patient safety which violated their daughter’s protected liberty interest in a safe and humane environment.

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