Abraham L. Davis - The Supreme Court, Race, and Civil Rights: From Marshall to Rehnquist

Abraham L. Davis

To the memory of my parents, Slade and Ruby Luck.

Barbara Luck Graham

Abraham L. Davis Barbara Luck Graham

Copyright 1995 by Sage Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Abraham L.

The Supreme Court, race, and civil rights/Abraham L. Davis, Barbara Luck Graham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8039-7219-9.ISBN 0-8039-7220-2
1. Race discriminationLaw and legislationUnited States. 2. Civil rightsUnited States 3. United StatesSupreme Court. I. Graham, Barbara Luck. II. Title.
KF4755.D38 1995
342.73085dc20

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

00 01 02 03 10 9 8 7 6 5

Sage Production Editor: Diana E. Axelsen
Sage Typesetter: Danielle Dillahunt

The Supreme Court and the Legitimization of Slavery:
The Marshall and Taney Eras, 1801-1864

The Post-Civil War Era:
Reconstruction and National Protection of Civil Rights

The Fuller Court, 1888-1910:
The Nadir in the Quest for Equality

The Persistent Struggle for the Ballot:
Blacks Abiding Faith in Democracy

Race and the Administration of Justice:
The Dawning of Hope

The Right to Counsel:
The Scottsboro Case

United States v. Carolene Products Co. and the Famous Footnote 4:
The Birth of Discrete and Insular Minorities

The Emergence of Strict Scrutiny and a Two-Tiered Approach to Equal Protection:
The Japanese Internment Cases

Equal Protection and Higher Education:
The Beginning of the Demise of the Separate-but-Equal Doctrine

The Introduction of Social Science Evidence:
A First for an Education Case

Group Libel Laws:
Protecting Racial and Religious Groups from Defamation

Interest Groups Political Use of the Courts:
The Attack on the NAACP

The Persistent Struggle to Vote:
From Litigation to Congressional Action

Efforts to Desegregate Public Facilities:
The Application of Brown in Other Contexts

Mass Demonstrations:
Lawful and Unlawful Conduct

Race and the Administration of Justice:
Equal or Unequal?

Private Interference With Constitutional Rights:
Criminal and Civil Remedies

Jury Discrimination:
A Persistent Problem

Interracial Dating and Marriages:
Constitutional Issues

4. The Burger Court:
The Era of Ambivalence and Uncertainty, 1969-1986

Second-Generation Voting Rights Litigation:
The Problem of Minority Vote Dilution

Housing Discrimination:
The Increasing Significance of Race and Class

Access to the Courts:
Fair Housing and Standing to Sue

Prosecutorial Peremptory Challenges and Juror Bias:
Swain Revisited

5. The Rehnquist Court:
The Era of Retrenchment and Unpredictability, 1986-1995

School Desegregation:
A Relaxation of Federal Court Supervision

Employment Discrimination and the Rehnquist Court:
A Cramped View of Title VII

Housing Discrimination:
A Problem for the 21 st Century

The Death Penalty:
Removing Barriers to Expeditious Executions

Hate Speech and Hate Crimes:
The Clash Between Free Speech and Equality

The Second African American Supreme Court Justice:
The Politics of Race and the Role of Ideology

The Rodney King Tape:
Race and the Criminal Justice System

Police Officers and the Use of Excessive Force:
A Nationwide Problem

T he issue of race and civil rights has been on the Supreme Courts agenda throughout American history and undoubtedly will continue to be an intractable problem facing the nation in the 21st century. Chief Justice Earl Warren, in his civil rights lecture at the University of Notre Dame, acknowledged this fact when he stated, If there is one lesson to be learned from our tragic experience in the Civil War and its wake, it is that the question of racial discrimination is never settled until it is settled right. It is not yet rightly settled. We have tried earnestly to examine the landmark civil rights cases covering a broad range of issues over a time span of more than 194 years to give students a deeper appreciation of the persistent quest by black Americans and other ethnic groups to obtain equality under the law. We examine the struggle to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination in a number of policy contexts from the perspective of racial and ethnic groupsthe politically disadvantaged groups in American society.

Many constitutional law casebooks devote a chapter to racial discrimination and include a few landmark cases on several significant issues, including desegregation, affirmative action, and access to public accommodations. Our book is more comprehensive and examines cases on the above issues plus landmark cases involving slavery, housing discrimination, interracial marriages, voting, wills with discriminatory provisions, group libel, hate speech policies, hate crime laws, sits-ins, and peaceful demonstrations. We also include a section on the trial of the police accused of beating Rodney King, because the issue of race reemerged and took center stage, as has been the case on so many occasions throughout American history. We emphasize the statutory foundation of civil rights lawan area of increasing importance for the contemporary Court and illustrative of the interaction between Congress and the Supreme Court in refining the meaning of equality. We highlight excerpts from civil rights statutes and other important background material in boxes in each chapter.

Our book is designed for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and law students. It can be used as a primary text for courses that emphasize civil rights or race and the law. The book is also designed to be used as a supplement for a one- or two-semester undergraduate- or graduate-level courses in constitutional law, civil liberties and civil rights, constitutional history, the U.S. Supreme Court, and for specialized courses on race and the law and those that deal with law and the social sciences.

Our organizational approach to understanding civil rights law employs three interdependent perspectives: legal, historical, and political. First, we analyze the problem through an examination of leading Supreme Court cases concerning antidiscrimination law. In each chapter, we trace the doctrinal developments of civil rights law in a straightforward manner, with minimal use of legal jargon and technical language. Our principle objective is to highlight legal principles and theories used by the Supreme Court in reaching its decisions. Following each of the chapters are case excerpts, 88 in total. Excerpted cases appear in capital letters in their respective chapter. Each excerpted case is preceded by a headnote that presents the factual background of the case, how the lower courts ruled, and how the Justices voted in the case. We provide ample excerpts from concurring and dissenting opinions in order to illustrate the conflict and disagreements among the Justices over the legal issues presented in the cases. In addition, we include in each chapter some tables that highlight the development of the law in most policy areas discussed in the chapter. To permit deeper exploration of civil rights law, minor cases that are not discussed in the chapters also appear in these tables.