Subordinate Citizens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Women's Literacy ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Inalienable Rights

Though no one doubted that women and children were citizens, there was also general agreement that they could not possess all the rights of citizens, especially full property and political rights. Abigail Adams challenged this status quo in 1776; and in succeeding decades a movement to supply equal rights for women gained momentum. Women’s literacy fed women’s political advocacy, including petitioning campaigns on behalf of Indians, abolition, and women’s rights. But post–Civil War politics blocked women’s suffrage, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of women’s subordination. Because women, like children, were understood to be not fully responsible, in criminal trials they were sometimes treated less harshly than men—especially in capital cases. Indeed, subordination to husbands remained a pillar of family law. And whether rich or poor, the marital bond meant bondage for some wives, where they surrendered not only their property rights but also personal and religious liberty. As for people of color, inclusion of women within the doctrine that all “are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights” proved a deeply challenging proposition.

People of Color and Equal Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Professional Standards ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
The U.S

In New England, if anywhere, equal rights might have included people of color. Free blacks comprised a small fraction of the population, and slave uprisings posed no threat. Yet in this region, as in others, racism prevailed. Discrimination in public business, including voting and education, was commonplace. But in criminal trials procedural safeguards and professional standards limited the effects of prejudice. Public opinion was not so restrained. And in rural New England vigilantes shut down New Hampshire’s racially integrated Noyes Academy and Prudence Crandall’s school for black girls in Connecticut. Connecticut banned schools like Crandall’s, she was jailed briefly, and the state’s supreme court denied equal rights for blacks, setting a precedent for the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling.

People of Color and the Promise Betrayed

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
New Science ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
The Supreme Court

In its 1857 Dred Scott decision the Supreme Court ruled that “negroes” were not, and never had been, citizens of the United States. Two justices dissented, declaring that when the Constitution was adopted free blacks possessed the rights of citizens, including suffrage, in seven states. The rights of free blacks, like other citizens, were thereby protected. But the Court majority, conflating slavery with race, denied citizenship to people of color. In fact, starting in 1776 a majority of states recognized the rights of people of color for at least a generation. Only after the free black population grew into the tens of thousands did states north and south act to curtail those rights. The new restrictions rested on old prejudices reinforced by the new “science” of race. Nature, it was claimed, warranted the denial of equal rights. So in new northern states—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan—as well as old ones like Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, equality was written out of law. By 1858, when Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas for election to the Senate from Illinois, some public figures explicitly denied the self-evident natural rights of the Declaration. But Lincoln made the Declaration’s self-evident truths his cornerstone. Regardless of race or nationality, he argued, natural rights applied to all men.

scholarly journals Special Solicitude: Religious Freedom at America’s Public Universities

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
William E. Thro
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government

Rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument that the First Amendment requires identical treatment for religious organizations and secular organizations, the Supreme Court held such a “result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.” (Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 189). This “special solicitude” guarantees religious freedom from the government in all aspects of society, but particularly on public university campuses. At a minimum, religious expression and religious organizations must have equal rights with secular expression and secular organizations. In some instances, religious expression and religious expression may have greater rights. The Court’s 2020 decisions in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, reinforce and expand the “special solicitude” of religion. Indeed, Espinoza and Our Lady have profound implications for student religious groups at America’s public campuses. This article examines religious freedom at America’s public universities. This article has three parts. First, it offers an overview of religious freedom prior to Espinoza and Our Lady. Second, it briefly discusses those two cases. Third, it explores the implications of those decisions on America’s public campuses.

Courtroom Observation of Ethnic Representation among Jurors in Harris County, Texas

1999 ◽  
Vol 85 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1218-1220 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Ray Hays ◽  
Stacy Cambron
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
General Population ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
Decennial Census ◽  
Harris County ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Ethnic Representation ◽  
Selection Factors

The ethnic composition of 22 juries in Harris County, Texas was compared with the ethnic composition of the decennial census of the county. Results showed an under-representation of Hispanic members and an over-representation of Euro-American jury members in civil, family law, and criminal trials. African-American members were represented on juries in proportion to their presence in the general population in the county. Whether this misrepresentation reflects selection factors in developing the jury pools, is the result of exercise of peremptory challenges by lawyers, or some other biasing factor is unknown.

Equal Rights, Privilege, and the Pursuit of Inequality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Order ◽  
First Century ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Individual Property ◽  
Nineteenth Century America

While cherishing ideas of equal rights and equality, Americans have simultaneously sought inequality. The Revolution of 1776 committed Americans to the idea of equal rights, but just as fundamentally it dedicated the United States to the protection and increase of individual property and the power to direct it to heirs. Although equal rights and individual property rights have proved compatible with religious and ethnic equality, social and economic inequality, both meritocratic and inherited, have been integral to the American social and political order. Moreover, based on the emerging biologies of race and sex, the idea of equal rights for people of color and for women faced new barriers in nineteenth-century America and beyond into the twenty-first century.

Equal Rights and Unequal People

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Ideal

Though Americans have favored the idea of equal rights and equal opportunity, they recognize that differences in wealth and social advantage, like differences in ability and appearance, influence the realization, or not, of equal rights, including equality before the law. In the generations after 1776 the rights of creditors, for example, often overrode the rights of debtors. And criminal trials demonstrate that in courtrooms equal treatment was most often achieved when defendant and victim came from the same social class. Otherwise if they came from different classes social realities, including ethnicity, color, and gender could shape court officials and public opinion. And when a woman’s sexual virtue was compromised, her credibility was almost always discounted. In principle officials paid homage to the ideal of equality before the law, but in practice unequal rights often prevailed.

scholarly journals Riservation Policy: Sources for Achieving the Social Justice in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. p424
Author(s):  
Shiw Balak Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Scheduled Castes ◽  
The Third World

In a democratic form of Government all citizens of the country are equal before the law of land. There is no scope of differences in any stage of life between them. Although natural discrimination may be possible, but politically and legally all should be equal. Discrimination on one or more of these factors became normal feathers particular in the third world countries of Africa and Asia. Really this social discrimination reflects in political rights and economic opportunities of the people so that the question of social justice became very important.In India, there has been so many social, economic and educational discrimination among the people from the very beginning. Weaker sections of the people have been deprived their rights. They are living like animal even today. So, Framers of the constitution of India include the provisions of reservation in the constitution of some posts of Government services to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes for their upliftment. Actually, these reservation policies were implemented for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes only at the time of implementation of the constitution. After very long time, the then prime minister Late V.P. Singh had implemented 27 percent reservation to other backward classes for gaining of Social Justice. But due to conspiracy and the upper castes the conditions of reamy layer were imposed by the supreme court of India. Thus this paper will disclose all secrets in this countex.

Let Them Plow

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Regional Variations ◽  
The Supreme Court

Chapter Two examines a handful of pivotal Supreme Court cases brought against school desegregation at the turn of the century and the first few decades of the 20th century. The Cumming v. Georgia case in 1899 indicated a demand for equality on the basis of taxpayer status that was understood by the plaintiffs to be intertwined with race, a demand that was interpreted by the Supreme Court only in the language of taxation and federalism. This chapter also highlights regional variations and a number of cases brought at the height of Jim Crow segregation by people of color who fell outside the black-white paradigm, even if courts then imposed it on them.

Victimization, Cultural Imperatives, and Empowerment of People of Color in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-190
Author(s):  
Tamanna M. Shah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Crimes Against Women

The high incidence of violent crimes in the United States of America, which include mass shootings, hate crimes, Islam bashing, murders, extortion, crimes against women and children, and white supremacist crimes, witnessed in last few years is a cause for great concern. The land of liberty is lately seeing increasing victimization of deprived or socially unempowered groups. This chapter looks at such victimization and the cultural supremacy that is giving rise to ethnic strife among people. It is argued that robust and well-evolved policies will reduce crime and empower marginalized groups, a majority of whom are women and children. The empowerment—social, cultural, economic, and political—and recognition of the challenge of victimization is the only solution. There is a need to recognize the egalitarian impulses for a better policy formulation devoid of prejudice to craft a secure future for the victims.

Vaterschaftstests zwischen religiösem Recht und Medizintechnik: Abstammungsklagen im algerischen Familienrecht

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-205
Author(s):  
Melanie Guénon
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Genetic Technology ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Family Code ◽  
Code Reform ◽  
Court Practice

This article examines the 2005 Algerian family law regulations concerning paternity and the use of DNA tests in Algerian paternity disputes. Specifically, it analyzes the relation between the methods of establishing and negating paternity recognized in Islamic law and the available genetic technology.
On the basis of three judgments of the Supreme Court, the present legislation as well as legal practice in Algeria is scrutinized. The article concludes that the Algerian legislator hesitates to dissolve the conflict between genetic technology and the recognized types of evidence of Islamic law. For now, court practice remains ‘traditional’ since judges might feel too much responsibility facing unclear regulations regarding paternity. Nevertheless, the Algerian family code reform offers the opportunity to use DNA-tests to establish nasab for both legitimate and illegitimate children. Due to unclear regulations it also paved the way to use DNA-analysis for paternity negation.*


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