Civil Rights Cases in American History Part 1/2

Well they wanted a certiorari that’s granted, they asked the participants to submit briefs and ambiguus briefs are submitted by interested parties if the court will accept them and then each justice forms an opinion usually through his or her clerks and there’s lots of negotiation and meeting among the justices then the case is scheduled for oral argument. Oral argument’s presented and the decision is rendered. Now, as for the inner workings of the justices and their clerks, they had been books written on that but suffice to say, there’s a collaborative process where they come to some conclusion. In my view, Dred Scott provided the justification for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Dred Scott kind of in layman’s term established the proposition and once a slave always a slave. You know the fact that Dred Scott acquires his freedom by being moved out of his slave state. When he came back to Missouri, he did not acquire the rights of a citizen having lots of status as a slave. So, the court essentially was limiting access to American citizenship to slaves. But in the Slaughterhouse Cases, I think that they were doing a literal interpretation of the amendments that were designed to force citizenship to freeing slaves and were expressing an unwillingness to expand those particular rights granted to African-Americans to other entities to set presidents for the use of those amendments and the business incorporate sector. Hard to say, I think clearly they were forced to make the decision by law. I would imagine there were some that made the decision with a “not” in their stomachs because they didn’t want to. I would imagine there were some that were eager to make it but those were flat-out cases of exclusion of people from participating and standard routine governmental processes. Clear violation of the anti-discrimination focus of the 14th amendment and they really had no choice in the matter. But to suggest that to speculate on whether they wanted to make decision or not I can’t do that speculation. That’s a good question and I think it points to you know, back to the Slaughterhouse cases. The difference that the federal government pays to States Rights plays into this Plessy, Strauder Ex Parte Virginia mix. In Plessy, it wasn’t an absolute exclusion of blacks from participating and some significant essential government function. It was a matter of segregating blacks and whites on passenger trains and the court indifference two states right to regulate its citizen’s jury distinction between the segregation of the races for what that state considered to be a legitimate interest from the question of absolute exclusion of blacks from jury duty so they drew a fine line in Plessy and allowed that segregation is accomplishing a significant enough government interest to justify that. That races all sorts of questions. The prevailing view at that time was that if there were any black blurred in the person. That person was black fro legal analysis purposes. And so he was African-American, he was black. They had to resolve that question and I think that races all sorts of questions for race relation even today. You know, what is African-American? There’s the other question of why Homer Plessy and why not you know for pledge hundred percent African-American and I suspect that in most of these civil rights cases, they don’t just perk up out of nowhere. I’m not a historian and haven’t studied the history of Plessy v. Ferguson in that sense but I would imagine that Homer Plessy was elected to raise that issue. It certainly complicates the case when you have a Caucasian looking person I a white train car who announces or it is discovered that he in fact is black by legal definitions and require to remove himself from that car. If the justification for that segregation as the defendants in that case asserted was to protect to the public peace and avoid disruption in society. The question arises, “Well if nobody knew his guy was black, where is the disruption?” so I suspect that Homer Plessy was elected for that purpose so that when the argument was raised, it could be made to look rather silly because in fact this person didn’t pose that kind of disruptive effect on the scene, apparently it didn’t work. You know the court included he was black and therefore he could legitimately be segregated but I think that’s the only significance that it provide a nice example of how lawyers and legal organizations strategize and try to create the same that makes the best case.