scholarly journals The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in 19th-century America: The Unusual Case of Baldwin v. Franks

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles J. McClain
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Unusual Case ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
State Action ◽  
14Th Amendment ◽  
Federal Statute ◽  
19Th Century America

In its October term 1882, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision which aborted federal efforts to deal with anti-black violence in the states of the old Confederacy. At issue in the case of United States v. Harris was the constitutionality of a federal statute, Section 5519 of the Revised Statutes of the United States of 1874, which made it a crime for private persons to conspire to deprive other individuals of the equal protection of the laws. A group of white Tennesseeans had been convicted under the statute for assaulting and badly beating a group of black criminal defendants in the custody of local authorities. The court held that there was no foundation in the Constitution for the federal law and voided it, thus overturning the convictions. The 14th Amendment, the purported basis for the statute, was aimed, according to the court, at state action and did not empower Congress to legislate against purely private conduct. It was the same line of reasoning that would lead the court in its following term, in the celebrated Civil Rights Cases, to declare unconstitutional Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which established civil and criminal penalties for racially motivated interference with anyone's full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations and conveyances.

Federal Statutes, Executive Orders and “Self-Executing Custom”

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic L. Kirgis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Face ◽  
Federal Statute

A hotly debated issue raised in this publication’s October 1986 Agora and, repeatedly, during the drafting of the Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Revised) has to do with the relationship between customary international law and federal law in the United States. Most of the debate addressed whether a newly emerged custom would supersede an earlier federal statute or self-executing treaty. The reporters of the Restatement took a strong stand at first, placing custom on the same plane as federal statutes and self-executing treaties: in case of conflict, the latest in time should prevail. Criticism rolled in, and the reporters eventually retreated a bit. The final version says only that since custom and international agreements have equal authority in international law, and both are law of the United States, “arguably later customary law should be given effect as law of the United States, even in the face of an earlier law or agreement, just as a later international agreement of the United States is given effect in the face of an earlier law or agreement.”’

Zivotofsky ex rel. Zivotofsky v. Kerry

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Wuerth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Federal Statute

In Zivotofsky v. Kerry, decided June 8, 2015, the United States Supreme Court (Court) held unconstitutional a federal statute that permitted U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to designate “Israel” as their place of birth on their passports, notwithstanding the secretary of state’s decision that such passports should designate “Jerusalem” as the place of birth. The opinion resolved a relatively narrow question of law (the constitutionality of an unusual statute), but the justices’ reasoning and language are of potentially broad significance and will provide fodder for many doctrinal debates in U.S. foreign relations law.

Supreme Court Behavior in Racial Exclusion Cases: 1935–1960

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-330
Author(s):  
S. Sidney Ulmer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Simple Procedure ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Racial Exclusion

The United States Supreme Court is often guided by rules of law which make the disposition of cases depend upon singular combinations of circumstances. It is a relatively simple procedure to go through the cases in a subject matter area and compile a list of the facts the justices seem to have considered material to their solution of the issue at hand. But the identification of the peculiar combinations of events which push the decisions in one direction or the other is more difficult. The number of possible combinations is almost endless: with as few as twenty specified circumstances there are more than one million possible combinations. And the weight of a particular circumstance may depend on the combination of factors in which it appears.Fred Kort has pointed to the “concrete differentiation of factual elements” which seem decisive in cases involving such procedural civil rights as protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, coerced confessions, and unfair trial procedures.

scholarly journals Forward—Police Misconduct and Kibbe v. City of Springfield

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harris Freeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Police Officer ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Misconduct ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
The Law

Published: Harris Freeman, Forward—Police Misconduct and Kibbe v. City of Springfield, 40 W. NEW ENG. L. REV. 393 (2018). The Law Review’s 2017 symposium, “Perspectives on Racial Justice in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter,” appropriately opened with a panel that addressed the ongoing challenge of combatting police misconduct, as seen through the lens of Kibbe v. City of Springfield, a civil rights case that unfolded in Western Massachusetts and reached the United States Supreme Court thirty years ago. Kibbe presented the Court with the question of what the proper standard of liability should be for a municipality accused of a civil rights violation under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for inadequately training a police officer who violates a person’s civil rights.

scholarly journals Murphy v. NCAA

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-40
Author(s):  
Shane Landers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
The People ◽  
Sports Gambling ◽  
Legislative Processes

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Thus, “Congress may not simply ‘commandee[r] the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.’” In Murphy v. NCAA, the United States Supreme Court held that a federal law that prevents States from legalizing sports gambling “violates the anticommandeering rule.” The Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy reemphasizes a fundamental principle of dual sovereignty—Congress is prohibited from “issu[ing] direct orders to the governments of the States.”

A Federal Right to Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Minow ◽  
Robert C. "Bobby" Scott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
The Right ◽  
Rights Issue

This book brings together an array of leading scholars to engage three critical questions surrounding the current debate over a federal right to education. First, should the United States recognize such a right? The authors of part 1 collectively answer this question as they weigh the arguments for and against. They paint a picture of crippling inequality within our schools—sharing accounts of massive racial and socioeconomic disparities along the way—which compels them to form a nearly unanimous consensus that a federal right to education would reap important benefits for all students. But even assuming this is true, a second question remains as to how the United States could establish such a right. Accordingly, the authors of part 2 explore three different mechanisms for establishing a federal right: implying the right through the Constitution, enacting the right in federal law, or adopting it through a constitutional amendment. Finally, if a federal right to education is recognized, what should it guarantee? The authors of part 3 confront this critical substantive question by weaving novel policy solutions together with evidence-based reforms to present options for ensuring that a federal right to education encompasses the tools and policy levers that are necessary to accomplish the goals that reformers espouse. Their proposals also provide key insights for impactful reforms for state courts interpreting education rights as well state lawmakers seeking to improve educational opportunities and outcomes. In response to these and other fundamental questions about the vast opportunity and achievement gaps of American schoolchildren, this volume builds on the current dialogue—both political and scholarly—that contends that education is the critical civil rights issue of our time.

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