Church Property Litigation, Liberty of Conscience, and the Ordeal of African Methodists in St. Louis

Author(s):  
Lucas P. Volkman

Focusing on the St. Louis Circuit Court case Farrar v. Finney, which culminated in a Supreme Court of Missouri decision, chapter 3 reveals that intra-congregational conflicts over church property among Methodists became especially heated when they pitted independently minded urban slave and free black congregants against all-white proslavery congregational factions. Like civilly and ecclesiastically disempowered white women, African American congregants, both men and women, had substantial spiritual and material stakes in the biracial churches they helped to build. The Supreme Court of Missouri, however, discounted informal biracial church customs for handling the affairs of virtually independent black congregations and ignored rules of law and equity in order to safeguard the material interests of proslavery churchgoers. As well, chapter 3 reveals that highly publicized litigation battles over church property, such as Farrar v. Finney, occurred almost exclusively in the slaveholding border states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia.

Author(s):  
Bennett Capers

This chapter focuses on a few issues related to video evidence and law, especially with respect to American law. The first issue is the history of the use of video evidence in court. The second issue involves constitutional protections regarding the state’s use of surveillance cameras. The chapter then turns to the Supreme Court case Scott v. Harris to raise concerns about the use of video evidence as not just proof but “truth.” These are of course just a sampling of the issues that the topic of video evidence could raise. The hope is that this chapter will spur further inquiry on the part of the reader.


1944 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-288
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cushman

On February 15, 1943, Wiley B. Rutledge, Jr., a judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, took the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the resignation in October, 1942, of Mr. Justice Byrnes. There were no other changes in the Court's personnel. Disagreement among the justices abated somewhat. In only a dozen cases of importance did either four or three justices dissent, as against some thirty cases in the last term. The Court overruled two earlier decisions, both recent; and the reversal in each case was made possible by the vote of Mr. Justice Rutledge.A. QUESTIONS OF NATIONAL POWER1. WAR POWER-CIVIL VERSUS MILITARY AUTHORITYWest Coast Curfew Applied to Japanese-American Citizens. In February, 1942, the President issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the creation of military areas from which any or all persons might be excluded and with respect to which the right of persons to enter, remain in, or leave should be subject to such regulations as the military authorities might prescribe. On March 2, the entire West Coast to an average depth of forty miles was set up as Military Area No. 1 by the Commanding General in that area, and the intention was announced to evacuate from it persons of suspected loyalty, alien enemies, and all persons, aliens and citizens alike, of Japanese ancestry.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Hunter ◽  
Hector R. Lozada ◽  
John H. Shannon

This article is a summary discussion of the main issues faced by faculty at private, often church-sponsored, universities who sought to be represented by a union in collective bargaining with their employers. The discussion begins by tracing the origins of the rule that faculty at private universities are managers and not employees under the aegis of the National Relations Act in the Supreme Court case of Yeshiva University. The summary then follows developments over the years up to the most recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board that sanctioned the efforts of adjunct professors at Elon University to seek union representation. In examining these two book-end cases, the article discusses issues relating to the effect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment in the context of the National Labor Relations Board’s shifting views on the topic. Last, the authors discuss unionization in the context of church-sponsored colleges and universities. Is it now time for the Supreme Court to review its seminal decision in Yeshiva University and for church-sponsored colleges and universities to rethink their positions as well?


Author(s):  
Lucas A. Powe

This chapter examines the Supreme Court case stemming from the issue of redistricting in Texas. After the 2002 election, Texas's congressional delegation consisted of seventeen Democrats and fifteen Republicans. After the 2004 election, the delegation was eleven Democrats and twenty-one Republicans. This change was the result of the 2003 redistricting effort demanded and orchestrated by United States House majority leader Tom DeLay. It completed the process of making Texas a Republican state. In 2003, Representative Joe Crabb of the House Redistricting Committee introduced a redistricting bill that would spark a legal battle between Republicans and Democrats in Texas. The chapter discusses the Democrats' legal challenge to this bill over the issue of gerrymandering as well as the winners and losers from the litigation.


Author(s):  
E. Patrick Johnson

This chapter probes the narrators’ deep and enduring emotional and romantic attachments to other women, primarily by focusing on stories of dating and marriage. Johnson’s interlocutors recall: stories of how they met their partners, memories of particular dates, their family’s responses to their relationships, and, for some of them, how and when they decided to pursue marriage. Importantly, Johnson notes that all of these interviews took place before the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage across the nation in 2015. Despite the legal limits of partnership in Southern states, several of these women chose to remain in the region. Their choices reflect the need to think expansively about the possibilities for queer life for Black women in the South.


1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-109
Author(s):  
Robert J. Harris

There were two changes in the personnel of the Supreme Court during the 1949 term. Attorney General Tom C. Clark was sworn in as an Associate Justice to succeed the late Justice Frank Murphy on August 24, 1949, after his nomination by President Truman had been approved on August 19 by a vote of 73 to 8. Judge Sherman Minton of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals was nominated to be an Associate Justice on September 15, 1949, to succeed Justice Wiley Rutledge. His nomination was approved by the Senate on October 4 by a vote of 48 to 16, and he was sworn in on October 12. During much of the term Justice Douglas was absent as the result of an accident incurred during the preceding summer recess. The loss of Justices Murphy and Rutledge greatly weakened the liberal alignment of the Court and very positively influenced the decision of a number of doubtful cases contrary to precedents of a recent date.


2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-450
Author(s):  
J. Morgan Kousser

The often kind and always interesting comments of Larry Griffin, David James, and Bradley Palmquist touch different aspects of Colorblind Injustice. Let me respond to them, in effect, in chronological order, according to which periods of history illuminate the comments the most. Palmquist points out that institutions like the Supreme Court may suddenly reverse their decisions, as the Court did in the !“switch in time that saved nine” after FDR had proposed to pack the body in 1937, or as it over-turned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). But as the Brown example suggests, it often takes a long time to overturn precedents, and that is the case with minority voting rights, as well. It was 25 years after Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” 24 years after Earl Warren ceased to be Chief Justice, and 23 years after Nixon proposed to water down the Voting Rights Act before the overwhelmingly Republican Supreme Court dared to seriously undermine African American and Latino political rights. Even then, they hesitated to attack the Voting Rights Act itself directly. Major institutions are tough in two senses: their policies often have large impacts, and the institutions, including those as tiny as the nine-member Supreme Court, are difficult to change.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document