The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Today in Supreme Court History: April 4, 1861
4/4/1861: Justice John McLean dies.
To get the Volokh Conspiracy Daily e-mail, please sign up here.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
MLK obviously had nothing to do with SCOTUS, but it is also the anniversary of his death.
The Supreme Court said the city of Birmingham, Alabama legitimately could punish the Easter marchers in 1963.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/307
“A slave is not a mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man; he is destined to an endless existence.”
Such fundamentalist claptrap! It is the very purpose of our Constitution, the Supreme Court repeatedly assures us, to ensure that we have a secular republic, and most especially to prevent our body politic from being poisoned by these dangerous, unAmerican, religious-fanatical ideas. To this end, the question of what constitutes human as distinct from subhuman life must, now as then, be reserved to it alone, for the same purposes today as before, to preserve the purity of the Republic and ensure that it remains free of the taint of ideas like Justice McClean’s.