Rutgers University Cancels Justice Joseph Bradley

Bradley wrote the majority opinion in The Civil Rights Cases and an ignominious concurrence in Bradwell v. Illinois.

Justice Joseph Bradley graduated from Rutgers University in 1836. In 1971, Rutger University named a building in Newark after Justice Bradley. No longer. The University has officially renamed the building. Tap Into Newark has this report:

The Rutgers University Board of Governors during a Wednesday meeting passed a resolution which approved the removal of Bradley's name from the building at 110 Warren St. A main reason for the name change, Rutgers officials said, stemmed from a court opinion Bradley wrote in 1883 that overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875. . . .

"The committee recommended removal of the name after intensive study of the judicial record of the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Joseph P. Bradley, for whom Bradley Hall was named," said Peter Englot, a senior vice chancellor for public affairs and chief of staff at Rutgers–Newark. "The study revealed that he was more than just 'a person of his time.' Rather, at a time when the forces favoring and opposing Reconstruction were closely balanced following the Civil War, Bradley instead chose to use his position to tip that balance toward undoing Reconstruction, regressing on civil rights, and opening a new era of oppression and terror."

The decision to remove the name, Englot said, came from recommendations submitted by a committee of Rutgers-Newark faculty, students, and staff appointed by Rutgers-Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor as part of the school's pursuit of its strategic plan that centers on strengthening inclusivity on campus.

The Civil Rights Cases is still good law. The Supreme Court reaffirmed the state-action doctrine in United States v. Morrison. Justice Bradley is also well known for his ignominious concurrence in Bradwell v. Illinois. He wrote:

The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil society must be adapted to the general constitution of things, and cannot be based upon exceptional cases.

I doubt any 19th century Justices is safe from cancellation. The 20th century Justices will be on the chopping block soon enough.

Comments

[LawTalkingGuy]

"I doubt any 19th century Justices is safe from cancellation. The 20th century Justices will be on the chopping block soon enough."

Good. No one is entitled to a building being named after them, especially dead people with odious views. We need to stop talking like they somehow are.

[CJColucci]

But--but--but, whining about cancellation allows you to preen as an advocate of free expression free from consequences from anyone of consequence, and simultaneously curry favor with the powerful. Talk about win-win.

[Mr. Hook]

It's rooted in such a servile, cowering relationship to the past. Blackman's preferred position is for treating the past like an insect in amber, totally immune to all forces and interests. If a building has been named for a person, this can never be undone. Which is wholly contrary to how we normally use history. We're constantly re-evaluating the past based on current needs and values (that's the whole nature of historiography!). Why on earth would we want to continue to elevate and honour people whose ideas and experiences don't inspire us or reflect our values? Why are the living to be held hostage by the decisions of those in the past to put up a statue or a name on a building? These people aren't being erased from history; they're just losing their status as figures of inspiration and honour.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also, it's not even like this is a really super old building with a personal connection to the person it is named after. By the looks of it this building was built in the 1970s and they just picked a notable alumni to name it after. Some really wealthy donor probably could have gotten the name changed to their own just by forking over a ten million dollars and no one would call it "cancellation."

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The hilarious part about this high-horse moralizing is that you actually think your own views won't be looked on with contempt 150 years from now.

Nice callback to the "Four Olds" of the Cultural Revolution as well, you Maoist dipshits.

[IPLawyer]

Not sure how on earth you get that sentiment from his post, which expresses the exactly opposite idea of what you suggest

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

No, it really doesn't.

[Groucho Marx]

In principle, I agree, with one small addition: we shouldn't judge people from the 19th century based on the 21st century morals. Most of historical personalities have been really bad guys. That includes Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and many others. If we use 21st century morals to judge people from the past, we will basically cancel our history. The only person who will survive the judgement is Duck Dodgers from 24.5 century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukTuKnIZCUU
On the 2nd thought, he might get cancelled as well. Nobody is safe these days.

[LawTalkingGuy]

"We shouldn’t judge people from the 19th century based on the 21st century morals. f we use 21st century morals to judge people from the past, we will basically cancel our history."

Two problems with this. First, is that it kind of ignores that people in the 19th century definitely didn't agree with Bradley's views on women or Civil Rights, such as women fighting for inclusion in society and freedmen in the South. You can typically find plenty of contemporary people who cast moral doubt on the actions of the powerful and notable.

Second, nothing about using modern moral judgment "cancels history." History is a genre and a discipline that studies and explains the past, typically through narrative. Saying "people used to do X, but modern audiences recognize X is morally wrong" doesn't cancel anything. And it doesn't cancel history to recognize that some people aren't worth honoring or praising anymore. Why should we maintain and create places of reverence for people who did really awful things. Indeed, sometimes, as with removing Confederate monuments erected as part of the Lost Cause propaganda campaign, it's less "cancellation" than it is making public history and memory more accurate by removing things that further a mythology.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

First, is that it kind of ignores that people in the 19th century definitely didn’t agree with Bradley’s views on women or Civil Rights, such as women fighting for inclusion in society and freedmen in the South.

What's ironic about this statement is that the people you're citing here would have likely found a number of your own political views socially and morally abhorrent; that an alignment exists in this case is entirely incidental.

Indeed, sometimes, as with removing Confederate monuments erected as part of the Lost Cause propaganda campaign, it’s less “cancellation” than it is making public history and memory more accurate by removing things that further a mythology.

Removing statues based on modern leftists sensibilities doesn't make "public history and memory more accurate," it simply endeavors to pretend that they had no significance in the first place.

If the left's recent iconoclasm had any basis in "accuracy," your allies wouldn't have been tearing down statues last year that had no connection to the Confederacy whatsoever.

[LawTalkingGuy]

What’s ironic about this statement is that the people you’re citing here would have likely found a number of your own political views socially and morally abhorrent; that an alignment exists in this case is entirely incidental.”

So? The point is that saying “you’re imposing modern values on historical figures” is undercut by the fact that the ideas aren’t all that modern.

“Modern leftist sensibilities” = historical accuracy about the Confederacy?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

So? The point is that saying “you’re imposing modern values on historical figures” is undercut by the fact that the ideas aren’t all that modern.

A rather weak justification for erasing their historical significance simply because they don't align with current wokism.

“Modern leftist sensibilities” = historical accuracy about the Confederacy?

Thanks for admitting that destroying statues which had nothing to do with the Confederacy were examples of your side's intellectual retardation.

[LawTalkingGuy]

What are you talking about?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Are you too dumb to understand, or just pretending to be a moron?

[LawTalkingGuy]

No. I think you misunderstood what I was saying about how sometimes removing memorials is in service of accurate history and then started spewing insults.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

No. I think you misunderstood what I was saying about how sometimes removing memorials is in service of accurate history.

So how did destroying and vandalizing statues of those who had nothing to do with the Confederacy fit in to that? You notably avoided that part.

[Mr. Hook]

So how should we evaluate and use the past? This is a serious question to be put to anyone who talks about cancellation: what is our relationship to the past?If we're not allowed to constantly interrogate the past, does it have a value to us? If we're not allowed to reject past values—based on our present interests and ideals—then we're not allowed to take inspiration either … unless the argument is that we're groveling before ancestors. Thinking historically does mean appreciating the context in which these people and their ideals operated, but that doesn't mean we shrug and say, "Well, that's just the way it was" is intellectually and morally lazy. We're either participants or spectators in drawing meaning from the past. Blackman wants us to be spectators.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

If we’re not allowed to constantly interrogate the past, does it have a value to us? If we’re not allowed to reject past values—based on our present interests and ideals—then we’re not allowed to take inspiration either...unless the argument is that we’re groveling before ancestors.

What a fatuous, question-begging statement. The past doesn't need interrogation and history doesn't have a side.

[Mr. Hook]

And thus you have cancelled the entire historical profession. Well done, you deep thinker.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

And thus you have cancelled the entire historical profession.

The historical profession was around long before your ideology came along and poisoned it, tankie.

[chrisare]

People become famous because excellence and have buildings named after them for excellence in their field, not moral purity according to ever-changing modern pieties.

What does the former have to do with the latter? Nothing at all.

And yet people defend a precedent where commemoration of excellence will henceforth be contingent on compliance with unknown future moral pieties. Excellence should only be usurped by excellence. The consequence of it being any other way are necessarily a devaluation of excellence, which can only impoverish a society in the long run.

[Martinned]

They're our buildings. We can name them or un-name them for whatever reasons we d*mn well please.

[CJColucci]

Strange that a bunch of libertarians need to be told that.

[Rossami]

So what is the proper naming convention for buildings in your sanctimonious view? Must they all be color coded? Designated by letter only? Go to the A building. Street addresses only? What do you think that will do to our sense of history when you break the only connections that we commoners routinely have with it?

More to the point, what is the logical end to this trend? If buildings are to be renamed for political correctness, must we do the same for cities? For states? Are we really at the point where the correct answer to 'where are you from' should be 'District 12'?

[LawTalkingGuy]

"So what is the proper naming convention for buildings in your sanctimonious view? "

Whatever the people who control the building want to name it. That was easy.

"What do you think that will do to our sense of history when you break the only connections that we commoners routinely have with it?"

Yes, I am sure people get their sense of history from a 1970s brutalist building on the Rutgers Newark Campus. But setting aside this particular example to your larger point. Um, it would improve our sense of history by removing mythology and hagiography in the public sphere.

"More to the point, what is the logical end to this trend? If buildings are to be renamed for political correctness, must we do the same for cities? For states? Are we really at the point where the correct answer to ‘where are you from’ should be ‘District 12’?"

Wherever people want to end it? I mean if most people in a city are unhappy with their city's name, they can change it, or not. I don't care, it isn't my city. I mean I probably might have an opinion over whether it is a good idea or not, but I'm not going to care at the end of the day. Maybe I'll care a little more if they rename my city to something that I don't really care for, but not by that much.

[Rossami]

So you're taking the highly principled 'it's not my ox being gored yet' approach.

Yes, there is a valid argument that the owners can do whatever they want. That argument is less valid when "what they want" is to avoid being bullied by people with simplistic (or worse, revisionistic) approaches to history.

[LawTalkingGuy]

"So you’re taking the highly principled ‘it’s not my ox being gored yet’ approach."

No, more of an "I don't care and probably never will" about name changes.

"That argument is less valid when “what they want” is to avoid being bullied by people with simplistic (or worse, revisionistic) approaches to history."

Two things:

First, "Revisionist" isn't a pejorative. All history is revisionist to some degree. Our understanding of the past is revised based on new evidence, the context provided by later events, and new ways of understanding the world. That's how its supposed to be. You can have very good and necessary revisions and very bad ones.

Second, it is interesting that you bring up simplistic and revisionist history, because the whole "let's rename things and remove statues thing" started with Confederate memorials: which is the gold standard for simplistic and terrible historical revision that is at odds with known facts.

[Mr. Hook]

" simplistic (or worse, revisionistic) approaches to history."

Serious question: Do you know what historiography is?

[Mr. Hook]

Never mind—LTG handled the issue already.

[Mr. Hook]

Well stated. It's a fascinating thing to see how apparently tenuous our connection to the past is—it's one building name change or statue removal from everything collapsing into the void.

[Cal Cetín]

At least the post doesn't attribute Bradley's concurrence to the entire Supreme Court, as I've seen some people do, either out of error or in an attempt to maximize outrage.

I think most of the justices relied on an application of the Slaughterhouse cases, saying that being an attorney wasn't a privilege or immunity of citizenship.

"...there are privileges and immunities belonging to citizens of the United States, in that relation and character, and that it is these and these alone which a State is forbidden to abridge. But the right to admission to practice in the courts of a State is not one of them...."

"The opinion just delivered in the Slaughter-House Cases renders elaborate argument in the present case unnecessary..."

Bradley, Swayne and Field concurred on "sexist" grounds. I suppose that means that public places with Field's name on them - like Wrigley Field - should be renamed.

[Cal Cetín]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/83/130

[ah....Clem]

Just a reminder:

It's not really "Cancel Culture" unless it comes from the Cancel region of France.

Otherwise, it's just "sparkling consequences".

Please get your terminology correct.

[Cal Cetín]

I'm not relying on Wikipedia for Bradwell's case, since they impute Bradley's concurrence to the entire Court.

Going by this site, it seems that in 1872, Illinois passed a law that “No person shall be precluded or debarred from any occupation, profession or employment (except the military) on account of gender.”

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/07/myra-bradwell.html

So I'm not sure why Supreme Court shouldn't have just remanded the case to the Illinois high court to admit Bradwell under the new law.

[Bill]

"The 20th century Justices will be on the chopping block soon enough." Earl Warren may be on the list. As governor of California he defended the internment of japanese citizens. He did express regret later and that, in his case may, get him off the hook.

[Stephen Lathrop]

A general note on, "cancellation," complaints. The biggest cancellation project currently under way in the body politic is the attempt to erase from the public life of the nation the influence of educated and credentialed people. If you are one of the many commenting here who uses the term, "elites," as a pejorative, you are part of that project. Compared to that one, almost all the others are benign, if not actually constructive.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The biggest cancellation project currently under way in the body politic is the attempt to erase from the public life of the nation the influence of educated and credentialed people.

From the speech that leftists love to cite, but haven't actually read:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we which to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration...

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

The biggest cancellation project currently under way in the body politic is the attempt to erase from the public life of the nation the influence of educated and credentialed people.

Do you know any such people?

[Shamie Ervin iv]

"I doubt any 19th century Justices is safe from cancellation. The 20th century Justices will be on the chopping block soon enough."

Too funny! You and John Ross are two great wits who entertain this old geezer. I. e., me.

BTW, have you seen any of those depictions of "hatcheries" in which extraterrestrials are said to be creating hybrids by artificial breeding of ETs and abducted humans? It's a crazy world.

[JonFrum]

I suspect he'd be happy to disassociation himself from today's Newark.

[shawn_dude]

"Cancellation" -- propagandistic branding of free speech that disagrees with one's (generally conservative) opinion. An attempt to frame disagreeable speech as an attack in order to silence critics.

"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Attempting to silence critics through claims of "cancellation" is itself a form of cancellation.