The Supreme Court, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Three Faces of Constitutional Equality

1975 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 945 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Harvie Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court in the Era of Bifurcated Review IV

2019 ◽  
pp. 600-690
Author(s):  
G. Edward White
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Sexual Preference ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1950S

Equal protection arguments were once described by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as the “last resort” of persons making constitutional claims. The court’s reliance on the Equal Protection Clause was slight until the 1950s, in part because “equal protection” was understood only to implicate legislature classifications that were “partial” rather than general.” After the use of the Equal Protection Clause to invalidate racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education, equal protection arguments became a staple of cases involving racial, gender, and sexual-preference discrimination.

Family Law and Inheritance

Japanese Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 212-224
Author(s):  
Hiroshi Oda
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
World War ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Second World

Family law in Japan has been democratised after the Second World War. There are two recent cases where a provision of the Civil Code (family law part) was found to be unconstitutional for the breach of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. One involved the share of inheritance of illegitimate children, and the other on the prohibition of remarriage for six months for females. The Civil Code was duly amended in 2013. The constitutionality of the requirement that a married spouses share the same family name is still held by the Supreme Court to be constitutional.

scholarly journals Affirmative Action And The “Individual” Right To Equal Protection

2009 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Action Program ◽  
Class Membership ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

When the Supreme Court, or one its Justices, writes an opinion invalidating a race-conscious affirmative action program, it is commonplace for the opinion to note that the rights protected by the Equal Protection Clause are “individual” or “personal,” and thus require the state to treat every person as an individual, not simply as a member of a class. This assertion about the nature of equal protection rights is assumed to be inconsistent with the classbased underpinning of affirmative action programs, and thus determinative of their invalidation. The problem with affirmative action programs, under this view, is that they ignore the individual characteristics of the persons affected and instead assign different treatment to persons based on their membership in a class. If, for example, the University of California Medical School at Davis assigns a certain number of seats in its entering class to black, Chicano, Asian, and Native-American applicants,2 it has made overly broad assumptions about the characteristics of the members of those classes, and then assigned a benefit on the basis of class membership without regard to individual merit or accomplishment.

Republication- Lochner Abroad: Substantive Due Process and Equal Protection in the Federal Republic of Germany

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 2179-2222
Author(s):  
David P. Currie
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Governmental Action

[T]here exists some strange misconception of the scope of this [due process] provision. … [I]t would seem, from the character of many of the cases before us, and the arguments made in them, that the clause… is looked upon as a means of bringing to the test of the decision of this court the abstract opinions of every unsuccessful litigant… of the justice of the decision against him, and of the merits of the legislation on which such a decision may be founded.As Justice Miller's famous lament suggests, wishful thinkers have sought since the beginning to find a way of making the United States Supreme Court ultimate censor of the reasonableness of all governmental action. Justice Chase thought he had discovered the magic wand in natural law, Justice Bradley in the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Justice Goldberg in the Ninth Amendment. Miller battled bravely, but he had lent significant support to the enemy with his freewheeling opinion inLoan Association v. Topeka.The fire was kept flickering in dissent and in majority opinions upholding laws against due process and equal protection challenges only because they were reasonable. It burst into full flame inLochner v. New Yorkin 1905, and for the next quarter century the Supreme Court was indeed what Justice Miller had denied it should be: ultimate censor of the reasonableness of all governmental action.

Racial Counterfactuals and the Uncertain Event of Emancipation

2017 ◽  
pp. 161-184
Author(s):  
Mark C. Jerng
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Race Discrimination ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses alternate histories of the Civil War in relation to U.S. Equal Protection jurisprudence and race discrimination law. It shows how the racial counterfactual shapes what counts as discrimination in an important anti-affirmative action legal case, Ricci v. Destefano. In particular, it analyzes the prominent use of racial counterfactuals by the Supreme Court justices in order to organize the perception of race. It then surveys alternate histories of the U.S. Civil War and describes their logics of narrative explanation. Finally, it turns to Terry Bissons’ Fire on the Mountain and Steven Barnes’s Lion’s Blood as examples of a strategic use of the racial counterfactual in order to envision different understandings of racial freedom and equality.

Equal Protection and the Urban Majority

1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 869-875 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Herman Pritchett
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Moral Leadership ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Educational Facilities ◽  
The Supreme Court

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On May 17, 1954, nine judges, sworn to defend a Constitution which guarantees equal protection of the laws, speaking for a country which declared its independence on the proposition that all men are created equal and which is fighting for moral leadership in a world predominantly populated by people whose skin color is other than white—these nine men unanimously concluded that segregated educational facilities are “inherently unequal.”Most of the members of this audience can probably still recall their feelings when they heard what the Supreme Court had done. Even those who were in full sympathy with the holding must nevertheless have been awed by the responsibility the Supreme Court had undertaken and shaken by some doubts whether the judicial institution could engage in a controversy so charged with emotion and bitterness without running the risk of political defeat and possible permanent impairment of judicial power.

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