Divided by Law: The Sit-ins and the Role of the Courts in the Civil Rights Movement

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
Student Control

A central goal of the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960, the protests that launched the direct-action phase of the Civil Rights Movement, was to give new meaning to the very idea of “civil rights.” To the students who took part in the protests, civil rights work entailed litigation and lobbying. It required relying on the older generation of civil rights activists and working through established civil rights organizations. It meant surrendering student control over the demonstrations. And, as the great unrealized promise of the then 6-year-old Supreme Court ruling inBrown v. Board of Educationmade painfully clear, it meant patience. For the thousands of students who joined the sit-in movement, reliance on their elders, litigation, and patience—the stuff of civil rights, traditionally understood—was precisely what they wanted to avoid.

scholarly journals Imprisonment during COVID-19 in Brazil: A Brief Review on the Prison Situation during the Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flávio Mirza Maduro
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
House Arrest ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts

This mini-review aims to reflect upon the conditions of penitentiaries in Brazil during times of the pandemic; it also brings to discussion the recent decision by the Supreme Court of Brazil which allowed for certain detainees to carry out their sentences under house arrest; in addition, it aims to discuss how the judges on lower courts have decided in light of the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling. By outlining the conditions of imprisonment that can be observed in the jailing system, the authors seek to critically reflect upon the role of justice in the society during times of hardship. The authors begin by tracing a historical background in a concise way, in order to elucidate how situations of illnesses and bereavement have developed during the years. After that, the authors compare judicial rulings involving the current prison status quo. To conclude, the authors seek to add to the debate joining the voices who cry out for more assertive measures in the preservation of life and health of detainees and prison workers.

Championships and Civil Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-146
Author(s):  
Derrick E. White
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Black College ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Predominately White Institutions ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Predominately White ◽  
Racial Change ◽  
White Institutions

This chapter explores how Black college football and FAMU reckoned with the civil rights movement. Gaither preferred interracial cooperation rather than direct action as a means for racial change. The civil rights movement, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education, and including the bus boycotts of the mid-1950s and the sit-ins of the early 1960s, undermined Gaither’s reputation with activists. Gaither’s opposition to immediate desegregation not only was an attempt to hold on to his powerful football program but also showed an understanding of how integration would perpetuate athletic dominance by predominately white institutions. Gaither’s experiences with structural racism in building Bragg Stadium provided an alternative perspective to the civil rights movement.

Fighting the Uneven Battle

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Rosen ◽  
Joseph Mosnier
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
District Court ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Court Judge ◽  
Exercise Facilities ◽  
Similar Claim ◽  
Federal Judge

This chapter describes Chambers's efforts to enforce Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in restaurants, motels, and other places of public accommodation, against attempts to circumvent the new law's broad reach, confirmed by an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The Charlotte YMCA argued for a "private club" exemption under Title II, but quickly abandoned that claim and agreed to desegregate when Chambers filed suit. Chambers also sued the Raleigh YMCA, which sought to prevent desegregation of its exercise facilities on a similar claim notwithstanding that the YMCA's officers had desegregated their cafeteria and rental lodging. After a loss at trial before an unsympathetic U.S. District Court judge, Chambers and LDF won an unqualified victory on appeal before the Fourth Circuit. Chambers also prevailed in a suit to open Moore's Barbecue Restaurant in New Bern to black customers despite Moore's claim to have arranged his business affairs so as to be free of any connection to "interstate commerce," a key element of the Supreme Court's basis for upholding Title II. Here, Chambers overcame a hostile federal judge who willingly ignored a fundamental judicial canon by repeatedly communicating privately about the case with Moore's attorney.

12. Concepts and Contexts

Land Law ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Land Law ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Legislative Reform ◽  
Private Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores some of the wider issues raised by the rules applying to private rights to use land, along with the nature of the challenges faced by judges and Parliament when deciding how best to develop those rules. It begins by discussing the importance of concepts and contexts in land law, as well as the tension between concepts and contexts and the effect of different judicial approaches to land law. It then considers the relative merits of judicial and legislative reform of land law and goes on to examine the impact of statutory reform, particularly of registration statutes, in land law. It also assesses the impact of human rights and regulation on land law, citing the Supreme Court ruling in Scott v Southern Pacific Mortgages Ltd (2015), before concluding with an analysis of the role of non-doctrinal approaches in evaluating land law.

scholarly journals The Politics of Hate Speech: A Case Comment on Warman v Lemire

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2011
Author(s):  
Ranjan K. Agarwal
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Teleological Reasoning ◽  
Academic Debate

In September 2009, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal waded into a highly public and acrimonious debate about the role of human rights tribunals and commissions, especially in policing hate speech. In Warman v Lemire,1 the Tribunal held that section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act2 (CHRA), which prohibits the communication of hate messages, infringed the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression, section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.3 The decision added to a firestorm of media, political and academic debate about whether anti-discrimination statutes should prohibit hate speech. The Warman decision is complicated by a twenty-year-old Supreme Court ruling, in a 4–3 decision, that a predecessor provision in the CHRA is constitutional. In this article, I argue that the Tribunal’s decision is logically unsound and likely the result of ends-based or teleological reasoning. In my view, ends-based reasoning does not assist in Charter analysis as it produces decisions that call into question the legitimacy of the courts. This article first outlines the facts in Warman and the Tribunal’s holding on the constitutional issues. It goes on to survey the legal and constitutional background to the Warman decision and discuss the Taylor precedent. It then describes the Tribunal’s reasoning on constitutional issues, including the Taylor decision and amendments to the CHRA after Taylor. Finally, it criticizes the Tribunal’s ends-based reasoning and argues that this type of reasoning is illegitimate in constitutional decision-making.

12. Concepts and Contexts

Land Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 406-424
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Land Law ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Legislative Reform ◽  
Private Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores some of the wider issues raised by the rules applying to private rights to use land, along with the nature of the challenges faced by judges and Parliament when deciding how best to develop those rules. It begins by discussing the importance of concepts and contexts in land law, as well as the tension between concepts and contexts and the effect of different judicial approaches to land law. It then considers the relative merits of judicial and legislative reform of land law and goes on to examine the impact of statutory reform, particularly of registration statutes, in land law. It also assesses the impact of human rights and regulation on land law, citing the Supreme Court ruling in Scott v Southern Pacific Mortgages Ltd (2015), before concluding with an analysis of the role of non-doctrinal approaches in evaluating land law.

Early Evidence of Cross-Racial Mobilization: White Candidates and Black Voters in the U.S. South 1940–1970

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-79
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Black Belt ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Senate Election ◽  
Rapid Deployment ◽  
Black Voters ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 2 examines the origins of cross-racial mobilization in the U.S. South between white/Anglo candidates and black voters. The author examines the 1950 U.S. Senate election in Florida between Claude Pepper and George Smathers, identifying the Smith v. Allwright Supreme Court ruling as a critical juncture leading to rapid deployment of cross-racial mobilization across the South. In particular, Claude Pepper covertly mobilized black Floridians by funding a black-run get-out-the-vote operation. The chapter argues that Pepper’s efforts dramatically increased black political participation. Relying on a candidate-level dataset across the U.S. South from the 1940s to the 1970s, the chapter then shows how cross-racial appeals also increased after the Civil Rights reforms of the mid-1960s, that white candidates from the Black Belt were much slower to adopt cross-racial mobilization tactics, and that white candidates mobilized blacks significantly more in the Peripheral South than in the Deep South. Finally, the chapter shows that increasing black registration likely leads to increased cross-racial mobilization.

scholarly journals Bodies on the Line: Contact Improvisation and Techniques of Nonviolent Protest

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Congress Of Racial Equality ◽  
Contact Improvisation ◽  
White Males ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Face

On the morning of May 4, 1961, a brave and motley group of travelers—seven black males, three white males, and three white females, varying in age and professional standing but all trained in nonviolence—embarked on what they called the “Freedom Ride.” Designed by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the bus ride was meant to commemorate and further the organization's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, a non-violent test of desegregation on interstate buses that quickly disintegrated in the face of staunch resistance. This time, riders would test the 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, which prohibited segregation in the waiting rooms and restaurants of bus terminals (Branch 1989, 390). Departing from Washington, D.C., the Freedom Ride aimed to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Explaining that they were merely exercising rights granted by the Supreme Court but that they knew the dangers, CORE director James Farmer said, “We were prepared for the possibility of death” (Cozzens 1997). Riding the momentum of the student sit-ins, the civil rights movement had become for many a matter of “putting your body on the line” (Branch 1989, 392).

Private Enforcement in the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. 311-336
Author(s):  
Barry J Rodger
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Private Enforcement ◽  
Court Ruling ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk

In Chapter 12, Barry Rodger retraces his footsteps in relation to his contributions in both earlier collections on the theme of private enforcement in the UK, with a particular slant on the extent to which consumers have benefited, or may benefit, from statutory and case law developments in the area. Accordingly, this chapter assesses how private enforcement of competition law rights has developed in the UK over the last twenty years. Key legislative developments, inter alia the Competition Act 1998, Enterprise Act 2002 and Consumer Rights Act 2015, have transformed the private enforcement architecture, notably with the introduction, and increasingly significant and enhanced role of the specialist tribunal, Competition Appeal Tribunal, and the availability of an opt-out collective redress mechanism. The chapter assesses the key UK statutory and case law developments, in comparison with the US private antitrust enforcement model, to reflect on the disappointing extent to which effective redress for consumers has been provided to date, despite those legal and institutional developments, although the recent Supreme Court ruling in Merricks should be pivotal in this context.

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