...America stands at a historical crossroad, a point where the nation must navigate through many complexities and social issues. Many points in our past have the government made decisions that went against the nation’s own constitution, breaking its foundational principles. The US fought with the aftermath of the Civil War and the complexities of reconstructing itself. There was one instance in the late 1890s that changed the legal system. One of the more notable court cases was Plessy v. Ferguson. This case made its decision on May 18, 1896. In the case, the court was confronted with the constitutionality of Louisiana's “separate but equal” laws. Laws which mandated racial segregation within the public facilities, such as train cars. Homer Plessy was a Louisiana resident, an American with African descent. He purposely violated the law by refusing to leave the “White Only” train cars. He was then arrested and charged with violating the separate car act, Plessy challenged the law by advocating for a constitutional check on these acts. Arguing that the “separate but equal” laws were in direct violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth...
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...What are the important and relevant faces of the case? 2. What issues is the court addressing? What is the legal problem? 3. What law is the court applying? 4. What is the court’s decision, analysis, and rationale? For this week, you need to find a case that deals with Due Process, the Equal Protection Clause or Delegation. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) What are the important and relevant faces of the case? The Case is based upon The Equal Protection Clause, in which, this case occurred one hundred and nineteen years ago, but it was very interesting as to see what has changed during the century. In 1890, Louisiana State passed laws prohibited races to sit together on railroads; something in common with segregation in the south in the 1950’s and buses. Trains were required to have seating for different races and were divided by curtains or some form of barricade to prevent the races from sitting beside one another. Homer Adolph Plessy, a Louisiana businessman, who lived a society of whites and blacks, happen to have a black grandparent, in which Louisiana law defined him as an “octaroon”, one eight of black heritage. Plessy did not consider himself black, but Louisiana did and therefore made him sit in the segregated area for blacks. Plessy did not agree and challenged the Jim Crow laws by breaking the law intentionally and sitting in an area of the train that Louisiana law said he was prohibited to sit in, in which case caused him to be arrested and charged with criminal...
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...CRJS400 - 1402B - 01 Individual Project: Unit 3 Human Rights Analysis Human Rights Analysis The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson established the separate but equal doctrine that was prevalent throughout life in the South for over fifty years. The case involved a man by the name of Homer Adolph Plessy, who was a colored shoemaker from New Orleans, Louisiana. He was only 1/8 black and 7/8 white, but under Louisiana law he was considered black. It also involved a white Judge by the name of John Howard Ferguson. In 1892 Plessy was asked by the Citizens Committee which was a political group made up of African Americans and Creoles to help them challenge the Separate Car Act, which by Louisiana law separated blacks and whites in railroad cars. If a black was caught sitting in the white section of the cars, they could get either 20 days in jail or a $25 fine. He agreed to help the Committee. On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket at the Press Street Station in New Orleans to go to Covington, Louisiana. The railroad didn’t support the Separate Car Law, because of the expense and trouble involved with it. They chose this station for that reason and the station was in on the test as well. He sat in the white only section and waited for the conductor. When the conductor arrived he told him that he was only 1/8 black and that he refused to move to the colored car of the train. A hired detective told Plessy he was violating the law but he still refused. Since he would...
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... Amendment V Article [V] (Amendment 5 - Rights of Persons) No person shall be held to...
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...Throughout history humans have been forced to face the daunting, frightening fact that we do not know who we are or where we are going. It has always been the authorities – the political, the religious, and the education authorities – that have attempted to comfort us by administering order, rules, and regulations; in effect they have successfully transferred their view of reality into our minds. It is important to question the decisions and ideas of authority, to support this argument one can look into specific historical figures and events. Galileo, Fleming, and the Supreme Court case Brown v Board of Education all exemplify the importance of questioning authority. The famous scientific figure Galileo reflects the importance of questioning authority. In 1616, Galileo was forbidden from holding or defending his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. The Catholic Church, who believed that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe, deemed his belief heretical. After reading Galileo’s published work, scientists were agog at the possibilities brought on by his ideas. In 1633, the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo to stand trial for his ideas. He had to publically denounce all of his ideas, and then he was convicted of heresy and sentenced to life imprisonment. The rest of his life was spent under house arrest, until his death in 1642. If the conviction of Galileo were never further questioned, science would have suffered an unbearable loss. The questioning...
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...In the Writing Process the question was What were the steps you took when you completed this assignment? Adrian response was he completed the campbell’s articles graphic organizer. Looked at the book for Robinsons personal characteristics. Second question was Compare this assignment with other assignment? His response was in English class we take more notes to get ready for the essay. The given amount of time to write a timed write in english class is a whole hour. Usually most English essays are typed on a computer. In the Prompt Analysis the question was Had you analyzed prompts before starting this curriculum. Adrian’s response was I have many times in English and Social Studies classes. The next part of the question was how was the prompt analysis in ACR the same or different? His response was in previous assignment he looked at the question as a whole, but in this assignment he cared about each individual word in the prompt. The question was your experiences with college reading and writing is different than experiences in high school? His response is the main differences is the amount of length spent on one assignment and the amount of depth in the...
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...has been used to refer to cohabitation or intermarriage between racial groups. Regulated by state law, miscegenation was illegal in many states for decades. However, interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, that decreed all state antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional. Many states, of course, had chosen to legalize interracial marriage much earlier. According to a May 14, 2012, Huffington Post article entitled “Interracial Marriage Statistics: Pew Report Finds Mixed-Race Marriage Rates Rising,” the 1980 Census (the first to collect data on interracial marriage) reported that 3% of all married couples were from different races. The number had risen to 8.4% (one in twelve couples) by 2010. Looking at marriages recorded in the years between 2008 and 2010, we find that 22% of newly-married couples in Western states were of different races or ethnicities, compared to 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast, and 11% in the Midwest. QUESTION 1: Analyze and evaluate each case independently by providing the following (about two paragraphs per case): LOVING V. VIRGINIA CASE. 1. Facts of the case: In 1958, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The two had gone to the District of Columbia to obtain a marriage license and returned to their home state of Virginia afterward. The couple was then charged with and convicted of...
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...their activities, allocate their resources, and assess their risks) 8. Maximizing individual freedom (e.g., the rights of freedom of speech, religion, and association granted by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) What is Law? Definition A body of rules of action or conduct prescribed by controlling authority, and having binding legal force. That which must be obeyed and followed by citizens subject to sanctions or legal consequences is a law. Qualities of Good Law What qualities make for good law? Fairness Flexibility As time changes, our values and our thought of fairness changes so the law has to flexible enough to change with society Brown v. Board of Education (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Brown V. Board of Education (1954) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) U.S. Supreme Court Separate but Equal $ Caucasian Students $...
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...When the need arises to change that norm, it takes an opinion-changing event to effect the views of society. In early 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision clearing the way for interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia, 1967). As ground breaking as that decision was, it did very little to diminish the opinions of people who were strongly against interracial marriage. In an era where the struggle for civil rights was an ongoing occurrence, not only did the law against interracial marriage need to be changed, but also the way society viewed it. In an effort to shed light on the underlying whispers of secret societal snubbing of mixed marriages, the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1967) was able to give our nation an opportunity to open a dialog. Today, we find a nation that is on the verge of repeating a similar course of action in the struggle for marriage equality. For the past few years, the fear, prejudice, and hostility against marriage equality for all, regardless of sexual orientation, have made its way into our national discussion. Several states have passed laws legalizing same-sex marriages and the Supreme Court will rule shortly on recent arguments for and against marriage equality, see United States v. Windsor (www.supremecourt.gov, n.d.). In this paper we will look at the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, to...
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...Ricci v. DeStefano Jennifer Drab Baker College Abstract Ricci v. DeStefano is case based on reverse discrimination. The New Haven firefighters that brought this suit against the city did so on the belief that the city in its efforts to avoid litigation violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Reverse discrimination is a term that is used widely; however, it is very difficult to move forward with this claim in a court of law. The New Haven firefighters that brought the suit had their case heard before the Supreme Court of the United States. This was not a case that the justices took lightly; they asked many difficult questions, which looked at many different aspects of Title VII. The answer from the high court is that rejecting the test scores in fear of Title VII litigation is not grounds enough to disqualify candidates that qualified for promotion. In the end, the high court upheld the firefighters claim that the city’s rejection of the exam scores violated the rights of those that qualified based on the exam. Introduction Ricci v. DeStefano, is case of reverse discrimination within the fire department of New Haven, Connecticut. This case is an illustration that affirmative action does not always result in fairness. New Haven city officials created a very comprehensive written examination for testing those fire fighters that were looking to be promoted to captain and lieutenant (Epstein, 2009). Unfortunately, the examination showed that there was disparity...
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...Andrea Smith Short Policy Paper smia21@uga.edu University of Georgia Introduction During the period of transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, American public schools found themselves faced with continued challenges in the efforts to equalize access to educational opportunities for African American children. This period of transition was the result of actions that began nearly half a century earlier. On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Reactions to the decision were varied and touched a range of emotions among nearly all citizens of the United States. For some, Brown was heralded as the triumph over legal barriers to better educational opportunities for racial/ethnic and minority students. Yet, for others, it endangered a way of life that in the eyes of some, ensured “separate but equal” under Plessy vs. Ferguson (1898). Whatever the perspective, Brown meant a departure from past rules and values. It meant change. Problem In “Public Education in the Twentieth Century and Beyond: High Hopes, Broken Promises, and an Uncertain Future,” Nieto (2005) outlines key legislation over the past seventy-five years in U.S. education that has aided in leveling the educational outcomes for minority students. After the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), policies aimed at providing equal opportunities to racial/ ethnic and minority groups began to emerge. As such, changes in...
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...The Supreme Court itself can really be seen as one of the main reasons for the continuous oppression of the African American people as the Supreme Court would rule on cases in a way that would only create a further perpetuate the oppression of African American lives. An example of this can be seen in the 1883 Civil Rights Cases where, “the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional those federal civil rights laws preventing discrimination by private individuals” (Dye & Zeigler 353). This ruling was an 8-1 decision that, essentially, denied the Congress the ability to protect African Americans by legislative means and gave the ability to create something sinister, segregation. The oppression of African Americans truly became systematic again as it alludes to an oppression that is similar to slavery itself. The Framers are equally to blame for this oppression as they did not ban it from the beginning, so the elites who essentially wanted to keep the racist agenda were continuously perpetuated...
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...[Enter Document Title] Foundations of the U.S. Legal System Prof. William Ewald Contributors Wim De Vlieger Suvitcha Nativivat Alasdair Henderson Ana Carolina Kliemann Alexey Kruglyakov Rafael A. Rosillo Pasquale Siciliani Paul Lanois Gloria M. Gasso Kamel Ait El Hadj Yuanyuan Zheng Ana L. Marquez Pumthan Chaichantipyuth Wenzhen Dai Penn Law Summer 2006 I. Introduction and Historical Background A. What the course will cover? This is not an introductory course. You are all lawyers; I shall assume a good deal of professional expertise, and that many of you already have a body of knowledge about American law. The task: prepare you for the coming year, give you the basic grounding that you will need for the courses you are going to start taking in September. For this, you need two things: ♥ A great deal of basic factual information about how the courts and the legal system function, and about basic legal concepts (and legal vocabulary); ♥ But more importantly: background information about some of the critical ways in which the American legal system is unique, and differs from legal systems elsewhere in the world. This is hard: often you will find that your professors or fellow‐students will make assumptions or presuppose certain ways of doing things that aren’t explained in class. A large goal of this course is to explain those assumptions...
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...Equality and the Constitution 4 Class 1: Slavery and the Constitution 4 1. The Original Constitution 4 2. State v. Post 4 3. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) 4 4. Reconstruction 5 5. Post-Reconstruction Cases 6 Class 2: The Advent of American Constitutional Law: Brown 7 6. RACIAL EQUALITY 7 7. Brown I (1954) The segregation of children in public schools based solely on race violates the Equal Protection Clause. 7 2. Brown II 8 3. What was the constitutional harm in Brown? 8 4. THEORY 8 5. Subsequent School Desegregation 9 Class 3: Local Efforts to Desegregate: Parents Involved 11 6. Parents Involved 11 Class 4: Rational Basis Review: Cleburne, Romer, etc. 13 2. Tiers of Scrutiny 13 3. Beazer (1979) 13 4. Moreno (1973) 14 5. Cleburne (1985) 14 6. Romer (1996) 15 7. Nordlinger (1992) and Allegheny Pittsburgh (1989) 16 8. Lee Optical (1955) 17 Class 5: Racial Classifications and Heightened Scrutiny: Strauder, Korematsu, Loving 17 9. Heightened Scrutiny Analysis 17 10. Strauder (1880) 17 11. Korematsu (1944) 18 12. Loving (1967) 19 13. Theories Supporting Strict Scrutiny of Racial Classifications 20 14. Tiers of Scrutiny 20 15. Tiers of Scrutiny Table 21 Class 6: Facially Neutral Classifications: Washington v. Davis 21 16. Types of Discrimination (from Fall) 21 X. Disparate Impact 21 XI. Purposive Discrimination 22 ...
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... Abstract Previous research has shown that individuals who are highly conservative are more likely to hold negative perceptions of African-Americans and other minorities. Furthermore, racial antipathy affects the way individuals perceive Barack Obama. In light of recent trends, this study tested whether individuals who identify themselves as Republicans are substantially more likely to maintain negative racial attitudes. The study also investigated whether white Americans are more likely than other racial groups to harbor racial prejudices and disapprove of Barack Obama. Results from this study indicated that racial resentment plays a significant role in contemporary politics. Data from between-subjects ANOVA and correlational analysis suggested that the Democratic Party and Republican Party are polarized in regards to racial issues. Moreover, conservative whites are the most likely racial group to hold racial prejudices against African-Americans. Finally, disapproval of President Obama is highly associated with high levels of negative racial stereotypes. Keywords: race, antipathy, conservatism, prejudices, Obama Is Racial Antipathy Increasing? The Polarizing Effect of Obama’s Presidency In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African-American to become President of the United States. His election marked a pivotal turning point in American politics. To millions, Obama’s election signaled the start of a post-racial America. The country was infused with euphoria...
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