Neither Hero Nor Villain: The Supreme Court, Race, and the Constitution in the Twentieth Century -- Chapter 1: The Plessy Era

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Klarman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court and Elites

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-58
Author(s):  
Neal Devins ◽  
Lawrence Baum
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Good Policy

This chapter develops the argument that is summarized in chapter 1. One lesson of social psychology is that Supreme Court justices are not single-mindedly devoted to making good law or good policy. Rather, they have multiple goals that include a concern for their reputations, especially how they are regarded by the elite groups of which they are part. As a result, while the general public may have an impact on the justices, they respond primarily to fellow elites. Indeed, the Court’s decisions on most controversial social issues such as affirmative action and same-sex marriage are more consistent with the policy positions of highly educated people than the positions of the public as a whole. Starting with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, elites have become less homogeneous; over the past 25 years, today’s elites increasingly reflect the growing partisan divide among liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. Nonetheless, norms within the elite legal profession such as collegiality and legally oriented decision making shape the behavior of justices, sometimes counteracting the effects of ideology.

Centenary of HM Seervai – Doyen of Indian constitutional law – an Australian appreciation

Legal Studies ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-378
Author(s):  
Michael Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Fourth Edition ◽  
High Court ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Authority

For much of the second half of the twentieth century, HM Seervai was a leading advocate of the Bombay High Court. He argued some of the most important constitutional cases decided by the Supreme Court of India and eventually resolved in 1970 to write his Constitutional Law of India. It became the leading text on Indian constitutional law. It is still in widespread use. Many instances of recent citations are quoted. But it is not the usual commentary on the text of the Indian constitutional and case law. Instead, the book contains a running discussion on the shifts in direction as well as sharp criticisms where Seervai felt that the courts had strayed from correct constitutional doctrine. Seervai died in 1996 as the fourth edition was just completed. In this paper, originally given as a lecture in Mumbai in 2007 on the centenary of Seervai’s birth, the author questions Seervai’s testamentary prohibition on posthumous editions of his text. He urges that a new edition should be produced to keep Seervai’s legacy alive not only in India but in other constitutional democracies where Indian judicial authority is increasingly cited.

All Things in Proportion? The United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 96-126
Author(s):  
Alec Stone Sweet ◽  
Jud Mathews
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Rational Basis ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Strict Scrutiny ◽  
The Supreme Court

This chapter considers constitutional rights doctrines of the United States in light of the global spread of proportionality. It challenges the view that proportionality is alien to the American constitutional experience, showing that American courts have developed approaches to rights that closely resemble proportionality. In particular, the Supreme Court’s test for state laws that burdened interstate commerce, developed in the nineteenth century, resembled proportionality, and so did “strict scrutiny” review as it was initially applied by the Supreme Court in the mid-twentieth century. The Supreme Court’s current approach to constitutional rights, relying heavily on separate tiers of review, is characterized by three pathologies: (i) judicial abdication, in the form of rational basis review; (ii) analytical incompleteness, when an explicit balancing stage is omitted; and (iii) instability, leading to reclassification and doctrinal incoherence. The chapter argues that proportionality can protect rights more consistently and coherently than the current American approach, and concludes by showing how courts courts could give proportionality greater expression in constitutional doctrine.

The Supreme Court in the Era of Bifurcated Review V

2019 ◽  
pp. 691-784
Author(s):  
G. Edward White
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Jurisprudence

Of all the areas of twentieth-century constitutional jurisprudence, that of free speech has had the most dramatic transformation. From a state of insignificance, the First Amendment has been applied against the states in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and made the basis for invalidating restrictions on the expressive activities of political and religious minorities, corporations, contributors to political campaigns, and commercial advertisers.

The Judicial Response to the Administrative State

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Way ◽  
Judicial Role

This chapter describes the way a requirement of contestation was introduced into definitions of federal judicial power in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The case-or-controversy requirement arose as a tool with which federal courts could refrain from lending support to the investigatory and regulatory initiatives of the growing administrative state. Justice Stephen Field played a central role in the introduction of the contestation construct, and it took hold at the Supreme Court in the twentieth century, as progressive Justices came to embrace contestation as an essential limit on the judicial role in constitutional litigation.

Carvalho Yeo and the 1928 Hong Kong Treasury Swindle

Meeting Place ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Munn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Asian Cities ◽  
The Government ◽  
Individual Choices

In 1928 Carvalho Yeo was accused of stealing more than a quarter of a million dollars from the Government Treasury through an elaborate cheque fraud. Yeo was traced to Shanghai and brought back to Hong Kong, where, after a sensational trial before the Supreme Court, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. His actions exposed chaotic management in the Treasury and brought into question the competence of senior government officials. Carvalho Yeo was a man of ‘mysterious antecedents and doubtful nationality’ – a criminal wanted by police in other Asian cities before he came to Hong Kong. Possibly of ‘Sino-Siamese’ origins, he presented himself by turns as a Chinese, a Portuguese, and a British subject, and deployed various aliases, fictional partners, and fake companies to carry out his plans. His story fascinated the Hong Kong public as much as it embarrassed the authorities. The chapter asks what Yeo’s manipulation of identities tells us about relations between the communities in early twentieth-century Hong Kong and suggests that, while racial divides were real and often rigid, individual choices sometimes challenged this rigidity, even – as in Carvalho Yeo’s case – to the point of making a farce out of the divides.

Holding Steady

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Martin S. Flaherty
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
International Law ◽  
American History ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Tradition

This chapter contends that for much of American history, constitutional tradition confirmed the Founders' basic commitments about separation of powers, foreign affairs, and the courts. In particular, the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary more generally played their part as originally envisioned. That meant, among other things, fulfilling their assigned roles of checking both Congress and the president, not to mention the states, in the service of protecting individual rights under both domestic and international law. These general patterns, moreover, persisted though the mid-twentieth century. However, the chapter makes its case mainly though a consideration of certain landmark controversies and decisions that are nonetheless representative. These cases suffice to confirm the overall fidelity of subsequent constitutional tradition to the Constitution's initial vision.

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