In this post, I am going to limit the constitutional issues I will discuss to just one kind of constitutional issue: racial justice. Even though there are many great Supreme Court decisions that deal with many other topics, such as federalism, presidential authority/power, individual rights (in a libertarian sense), civil liberties of persons accused of crimes, and so on, I am only going to talk about cases pertaining to whether blacks - and other racial minorities - are truly getting “equal protection of the laws” and are getting “due process of law,” as guaranteed by the Constitution. This list is limited only to the great decisions the SCOTUS has rendered dealing with that one topic. This list is not limited to only the “best,” but is a list of ALL of the GREAT decisions the Court has rendered (that I am aware of, through all of the research I have done). (I will elaborate about a few of these cases, and in addition to naming the case, I will also enumerate the Court’s division, and the year the decision was handed down.)
The Great Racial Segregation cases.Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (7-2; 1938)
Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (9-0; 1948)
Sweatt v. Painter (9-0; 1950)
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (9-0; 1950)
Brown v. Board of Education (9-0; 1954)
Bolling v. Sharpe (9-0; 1954)(companion case to
Brown)
Mayor of Baltimore v. Dawson (9-0; 1955)
Holmes v. Atlanta (9-0; 1955)
New Orleans City Park Imp. Ass’n v. Detiege (9-0; 1958)
Cooper v. Evans (9-0; 1958)
Gomillion v. Lightfoot (9-0; 1960)(It should be noted that, in this case, eight Justices took the view that the Fifteenth Amendment was violated, while one Justice - Charles Whittaker - wrote a concurring opinion stating that it was much more logical to cite the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment instead of the Fifteenth; in hindsight, several Justices have subsequently commented that they believe Whittaker had the better, sounder, more legally persuasive argument than the majority opinion.)
Johnson v. Virginia (9-0; 1963)
McLaughlin v. Florida (9-0; 1964)
Loving v. Virginia (9-0; 1967)(I feel it necessary to point out that only Section 1 of this opinion is constitutionally/legally correct, whereas Section 2 is completely and utterly incorrect, IMO; Section 1 is a completely valid argument and almost perfect at being legally persuasive, but Section 2 is unnecessary, dubious, and disturbing in terms of its broader legal implications. The Senior Associate Justice, Hugo Black, I'm very sure, did not actually agree with Section 2, but for some baffling reason, he did not write a concurring opinion saying so.)
I also want to point out, before I move on to the next topic, that a few of these Court decisions were not supported by perfectly well-written opinions. “
Brown was a great and correct decision, but it must be said in all candor that the decision was supported by a very weak opinion. Those two facts, taken together, have caused an enormous amount of trouble in the law.” (Robert Bork, “The Tempting of America,” page 75.) The
Brown opinion could and should have pointed out the fact that the child(ren) in the Brown family, who lived in an almost-all-white neighborhood in Topeka, Kansas, had to travel a much farther distance to get to their assigned, all-black elementary school than the white children in the same neighborhood, of similar age, to get to their assigned, all-white elementary school. The Brown child(ren) had to travel over one mile to their school but all the other white children in that city block and neighborhood were allowed to travel a fraction of that distance to get to their elementary school. If the Court had simply pointed out that fact, and pointed out how obvious it is that children in the same neighborhood were being treated differently - for black children, worse - because of their race, then that would have bolstered the correctness of the Court’s conclusion. Unfortunately, Chief Justice Warren did not think to mention that. He focused his attention on something else, which wasn’t nearly as convincing/persuasive.
Loving has an important omission too. If the Court had pointed out the fact that, when whites are only allowed to get married to other whites and blacks (as well as other minorities) are only allowed to get married to other nonwhites, then the net effect of that law is that every white person has a much wider and greater pool of potential marital partners than each nonwhite person. “There’s a lot of fish in the ocean,” that one can get married to, has a greater meaning to – and provides greater opportunities for – whites than to/for nonwhites under a miscegenation law. Adding any comment to that effect to the Court’s opinion in
Loving would have bolstered the correctness of its opinion (Section 1 only) and conclusion. Unfortunately, again, Chief Justice Warren did not think to mention that.
Bolling had one very big problem, too. That opinion should not have cited the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment for that holding, and instead Chief Justice Warren should have pointed to Congress’s enforcement power in Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Chief should have said that Congress is explicitly empowered to enforce the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth, and logic compels the conclusion that Congress, too, has to treat everyone equally, regardless of race. Congress cannot be
above or beyond the rule of equality that it is empowered to enforce. Saying
that, instead of talking about a historically unrelated clause in the Bill of Rights, would have made the decision in
Bolling even more clearly correct – legally as well as morally.
The Great Voting Rights CasesGuinn v. United States (8-0; 1915)
Nixon v. Herndon (9-0; 1927)
Smith v. Allwright (8-1; 1944)
One Great Case establishing the principle that the “Equal Protection of the Laws” is just as appropriate and necessary for the executive branch of government to obey as it is for the legislative branchYick Wo v. Hopkins (9-0; 1886)
The Great Cases of Racial Justice in courts of lawStrauder v. West Virginia (and two companion cases) (7-2; 1880)
Batson v. Kentucky (7-2; 1986)
Powell v. Alabama (a.k.a., The Scottsboro Boys Case) (7-2; 1932)(Note: this holding was based on Due Process and Right to Counsel, not Equal Protection.)
Brown v. Mississippi (9-0; 1936)(Note: this holding was based on Due Process and Self-Incrimination, not Equal Protection.)
Chambers v. Florida (9-0; 1940)(Note: this holding was based on Due Process (with a strong implication of Self-Incrimination principle to bolster the holding), not Equal Protection.)
I don’t want to focus on just one “best” decision, I want to lavish praise on the Supreme Court for rendering ALL of those decisions. It’s important to recognize that all of these decisions happened, that they were all legally justifiable interpretations of the Constitution, and it’s important that we hope and pray that none of them ever get overturned. Plus, all of these decisions were/are MORALLY inspiring too. They have helped make America a better nation; “... a more perfect Union. …” Do you remember what Martin Luther King, Jr. said on April 3, 1968, the night before he was murdered?
Do you remember him saying that he’d been to the mountaintop, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land!
(Okay, I’m crying now. I can never, ever listen to that speech without getting tears in my eyes.)
All of the above decisions have repeatedly moved this nation farther and farther – one step at a time – toward the
Promised Land. It’s a land which we are destined to get to, one day, so long as we keep remembering what our Constitution requires of us, promises to us, and which we must always strive to obey. “Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the sea fearing man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.” -- Carl Schurz.
HOWEVER,
Lest you think I am only here to lavish praise on every “liberal/progressive” racially-related decision rendered by the Supreme Court, I am not here to do only that. I'm going to mention four
conservative Supreme Court decisions that I completely agree with as well. None of these four decisions did anything to help America move to the Promised Land, but they are, nevertheless, important to think about, and these decisions have lessons to teach us (if you’re willing to listen to them).
Breedlove v. Suttles (9-0; 1937)(Over 25 years later, this one was partially abrogated by the 24th Amendment, and shortly after that, completely overturned by
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (6-3; 1966).)
Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections (9-0; 1959)(Abrogated - or superseded - by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)
These two cases deal with poll taxes and literacy tests, respectively. Lots of contemporary “liberals/progressives” like to say, over and over, that poll taxes and literacy tests were racially discriminatory, or that they were designed and intended to be racially discriminatory. These two rulings –
Breedlove and
Lassiter – prove that nothing could be further from the truth. These two UNANIMOUS decisions – one of them written by none other than Justice William O. Douglas: the single most progressive and egalitarian-minded Justice the Court has ever had – will prove to you that if you think poll taxes and/or literacy tests are racially discriminatory, that is purely in your imagination. Your imagination is not in the Constitution. Yes,
Harper did overturn
Breedlove, and the former was written by Justice Douglas too. But you know what Douglas did not say in
Harper? He did not say that poll taxes were racially discriminatory. Douglas did not come within one mile of saying that.
Palmer v. Thompson (5-4; 1971)(The five members of this Court majority were clearly the conservative wing of the Court in the 1970-71 term. This ruling establishes that, just because there is judicial intuition that a particular government action was undertaken with a racist motivation, that does not, in and of itself, prove that the Equal Protection Clause was violated; not when, clearly and obviously, there was no unequal treatment of anyone (as a consequence of the challenged government action).)
Washington v. Davis (7-2; 1976)(The conservative wing of this court was among this 7-man majority, and the Court’s two most liberal members were the dissenters. A policy of screening prospective police department officers with a test does not violate the Equal Protection Clause just because a statistically disproportionate number of test takers who failed the test were black people. There has to be evidence of an intent to discriminate in order to establish a
prima facie case that there was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, not just evidence of “disparate impact.”)
Do these last two cases contradict one another? No, not if you keep in mind these two thoughts: in order to establish a
prima facie case that the Equal Protection Clause was violated, there has to be both of these two things: evidence of actual unequal treatment AND evidence of an intent to discriminate. Neither of these two principles contradict any of the several cases I mentioned in the top of this post.
These four decisions establish that, sometimes you may think racial discrimination is going on, but that is just in your imagination. I applaud the SCOTUS for these four decisions too.
