Equal Protection and the Urban Majority

1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 869-875 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Herman Pritchett

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.

Author(s):  
G. Edward White

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-85
Author(s):  
Alasman Mpesau

In the General Election and Regional Head Election Law, the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) has the authority supervisory to each Election stages, it is the center for law enforcement activities of the Election (Sentra Gakkumdu) to criminal acts and carrying out the judicial functions for investigating, examining, and decided on administrative disputes of General Election and Regional Head Election.  With the Bawaslu’s authority then placed as a super-body institution in the ranks of the Election Management Body, due to its essential role in building a clean and credible electoral system, it also has potential for abuse of power within it. In Law no. 48 of 2009 concerning Judicial Power has defined state institutions that have the authority to administrate judicial functions. These are the Supreme Court and Judicial Bodies that under its lines of general court, Religious Courts, Military Courts, Administrative Court (PTUN) and the Constitutional Court. The research method is normative juridical, that focuses on the analysis of the laws and regulations on General Election, Regional Head Elections and the Law on Judicial Power. The analytical tool is descriptive analysis, by describing the main issues, an analysis is carried out that was supported by case-approach related to the research. The study concludes that Bawaslu in carrying out judicial functions in its position as a semi-judicial institution has not a hierarchical relationship to the Supreme Court (MA) and the Constitutional Court (MK); however, what does exist is functional relationship.


2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-257
Author(s):  
V. V. Chumak

The role and place of higher specialized courts in the judicial system of Ukraine have been studied and determined. The author has studied such main categories as “judicial system of Ukraine”, “judiciary”, “judicial system” and “judicial power”. The judicial system of Ukraine has been established. The normative and legal base of functioning of highest specialized courts of Ukraine has been characterized. The author has provided own definition of the categories “judicial system of Ukraine” and “judicial power of Ukraine”. The author has offered to understand the category of “judicial system of Ukraine” as the totality of all hierarchically structured elements of the system (courts), which are endowed with exclusive competence to administer justice, built on the principles of territoriality and specialization, are defined by law and united by general principles of their organization and activity. In turn, the concept of “judicial power of Ukraine” is defined as the activity of courts (judicial system) to administer justice and to perform their professional duties within the limits and in the manner prescribed by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine in accordance with international and legal documents. It has been determined that highest specialized courts in the judicial system of Ukraine are the Supreme Court on Intellectual Property Issues and the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court. It has been concluded that highest specialized courts in the judicial system of Ukraine play an important role in the holistic mechanism of the entire judicial system, since they are endowed with exclusive competence to consider and decide cases on the merits of certain categories, and their activities are determined at the level of a separate regulatory act, which determines their legal status, and hence their place in the judicial system of Ukraine.


2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 854-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul A. Sanchez Urribarri

This article offers a theoretical discussion about courts in “hybrid regimes” that evolve from formerly democratic countries. The evolution toward authoritarianism typically allows governments more latitude to reduce judicial independence and judicial power. Yet, several reasons, including legitimacy costs, a tradition of using courts for judicial adjudication and social control, and even the use of courts for quenching dissent may discourage rulers from shutting down the judicial contestation arena and encourage them instead to appeal to less overbearing measures. This usually leads to a decline of the judiciary's proclivity to challenge the government, especially in salient cases. To illustrate these dynamics, I discuss the rise and fall of judicial power in Venezuela under Chávez's rule, focusing on the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. Formerly the most powerful institution in the country's history, the Chamber briefly emerged as an influential actor at the beginning of the regime, but a comprehensive intervention of the judiciary in 2004 further politicized the court and effectively reduced its policy-making role.


Author(s):  
O. Kravchuk ◽  
I. Ostashchuk

The oath of a judge as an oath of office and as an element of judicial symbolism is considered in the article. The oath of a judge belongs to the categories of oaths of office, taken by an official upon taking office. At the same time, it belongs to the judicial oaths used in the justice process and is an element of judicial symbols. The oath of a judge as an oath of office symbolizes the endowment of a judge as an official by the state (judicial) power, the moment of his acquisition of powers (it is the inauguration ceremony), and the duty of a judge as an official to perform his duties properly. The oath of a judge as a judicial symbol represents a public and solemn obligation of the judge to exercise a fair trial in all its manifestations, including: independence and impartiality of the court, adversarial proceedings, equality of arms, and the rule of law. The judge takes the oath in a solemn atmosphere in the presence of senior officials (in Ukraine – in the presence of the President of Ukraine). It is an important ritual – a symbol of giving a person judicial power. The oath itself is a symbolic action of conscious choice of responsible and impartial observance of the law in the professional functions of realization of the rule of law for the good of all people. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that gathering a large number of people in one room can be problematic, so the oath ceremony was held even outdoors. It is stated that holding a ceremony in one of the judicial bodies, for example, in the premises of the Supreme Court or (subject to quarantine restrictions) in the territory of the Supreme Court may symbolize the independence of the judiciary and each judge from other branches of power. The peculiarity of the oath of a judge in Ukraine is its one-time nature. It should be taken only by a person first appointed to the position of a judge. In case of an appointment or transfer to another court, the judge shall not take the oath again. In this aspect, the oath of a judge is similar to the oath of a civil servant, which is taken only by persons recruited for the first time.


Author(s):  
Justin Crowe

This concluding chapter synthesizes the book's main findings about the architectonic politics of judicial institution building and contextualizes them within contemporary debates. It also reflects upon the lessons of the more than 200-year historical lineage of the institutional judiciary for our understanding of judicial power in America. More specifically, it considers the place of the federal judiciary in America's past and future in empirical and normative terms, respectively. It argues that both political rhetoric and academic exegesis about the Supreme Court embody a fundamentally incorrect presumption about the judiciary being external to politics, and that such presumption leads to a series of misconceptions about the relationship between judicial power and democratic politics. The chapter offers a conception that not only locates the judicial branch squarely within the political arena but also places substantially greater emphasis on its cooperation rather than conflict with other actors and institutions in that arena.


2021 ◽  
pp. 240-243
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Chapter 18 describes social science research of the 1940s and 1950s that showed how segregation harmed both minority and majority populations and thereby played a role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Between 1896, when the Supreme Court endorsed segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson to 1954, when the Supreme Court rejected segregation, social science had built a consensus about the many harms and costs that racial segregation imposed on Black and on White children. Like school desegregation, marriage equality’s victories in the courts were built on a social science consensus, specifically the social science consensus that children raised by same-sex couples have good outcomes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-138
Author(s):  
Christopher Phiri

Abstract On 23 November 2018, the Supreme Court of Zambia delivered a judgement which suggests that Zambian judges have virtually unbridled power to move on their own motion to punish for contempt of court anyone who criticises their judicial decisions. This article considers that judgement. It argues that whilst justice might well have been done in the case in question, it was certainly not seen to be done. Two main reasons are given for this argument. First, the judges appeared to have acted both as prosecutors and adjudicators in their own cause when it was neither urgent nor imperative to act immediately on their own motion. Second, the classification by the Court of the contempt in question as civil contempt rather than criminal contempt is alien to the common law world. The article culminates in a clarion call for the Zambian legislature to intervene and clarify the law of contempt of court to avert capricious and unbridled invocation of the judicial power to punish for contempt.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Badger

On Monday, March 12, Georgia's senior senator, Walter George, rose in the Senate to read a manifesto blasting the Supreme Court. The Manifesto condemned the “unwarranted decision” of the Court in Brown as a “clear abuse of judicial power” in which the Court “with no legal basis for such action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land.” The signers pledged themselves “to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation.” It was signed by nineteen of the twenty-two southern senators, by every member of the congressional delegations from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia, by all but one of the representatives from Florida, all but one from Tennessee, all but three from North Carolina, and half of the Texas delegation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1258-1282
Author(s):  
Rehan Abeyratne

Abstract This article, a contribution to a symposium on dominion constitutionalism, looks at sovereignty in Ceylon’s Dominion period (1948–1972). While the Ceylon Constitution has been the subject of in-depth historical and sociopolitical study, it has received less attention from legal scholars. This article hopes to fill that gap. It analyzes Ceylon Supreme Court and Privy Council judgments from this era on both rights-based and structural questions of constitutional law. In each area, sovereignty-related concerns influenced the judicial approach and case outcomes. On fundamental rights, both the Supreme Court and the Privy Council adopted a cautious approach, declining to invalidate legislation that had discriminatory effects on minority communities. This reluctance to entrench fundamental rights resulted, at least in part, from judges’ undue deference to the Ceylon Parliament, which was wrongly looked upon like its all-powerful British progenitor. On constitutional structure, the Ceylon Supreme Court deferred to Parliament even when legislation encroached into the judicial realm. The Privy Council, though, was not so passive. It upheld a separate, inviolable judicial power that Parliament could not legislate away. But by asserting itself as a check on legislative power, the Council—as a foreign judicial body intervening in Ceylonese affairs—stoked concerns that Ceylon was less than fully sovereign, which ultimately ended Dominion status.


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