United States Supreme Court
Two cases in the Supreme Court’s long history represent the nadir of its existence. Dred Scott and
Plessy v. Ferguson stand as the epitome of racial intolerance in the court. Following the
end of Reconstruction, Southern states began carefully crafting racial apartheid laws that legally separated
the races in all public facilities. The laws declared the facilities for whites and blacks to be equal,
without any attempt to make them so. Plessy challenged a Louisiana law requiring separate railroad coaches
for the races. By an 8–1 vote, the Supreme Court legitimized formal racial segregation and abandoned the
equal rights intentions of Reconstruction era lawmakers. By writing the "separate but equal"
doctrine into constitutional law, the court ignored its earlier precedents, destroyed the intent of the
Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, and set civil rights back for over half a century. With
this seal of approval, legal segregation was rapidly extended to public schools and other institutions.
Why did the court rule this way? Look carefully at Justice Brown’s callous opinion. What distinctions
does he draw between legal and social rights, between legalized social distinctions and "conditions
of slavery"? Are social separations based on racial classification distinct from civil rights? Justice
Harlan’s famous dissent, in which he declares the Constitution color-blind, stated several legal reasons
why this ruling was wrong. We shall see them again in later civil-rights decisions.
This same Supreme Court under Chief Justice Fuller creatively expanded the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to become the principal safeguard of property rights and business against government regulation.
This was never the primary intent of the authors of this amendment, but was a response by a court fearful
of social unrest. Thus this court gutted the value of the amendment for the blacks whom it had been primarily
written for after the Civil War, once again in the name of maintaining social order. |
