Today in Supreme Court History: May 2, 1927

5/2/1927: Buck v. Bell decided.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Nothing about the issue, or the holding.

“Three years of imbecilic ‘previews’ is enough.”

[DaivdBehar]

OW Holmes has never been wrong. He had a hidden utilitarian calculator.

[Bob from Ohio]

Best part of this series is your daily whinging about it.

To paraphrase Einstein. doing the same thing day after day expecting a different result is pretty imbecilic

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Perhaps he hopes someone at Georgetown might discover the issue of this feature's quality and attempt to do something about it?

[DaivdBehar]

Rev. What a hypocrite. You need to STFU until you resign your law firm job.

[DaivdBehar]

Bob. Are you a lawyer? The lawyer is dumb every day and refuses to go away. Talk to the lawyer.

[apedad]

I'm glad we live a a progressive society and are slowly (and sometimes unevenly), but surely moving in the right direction.

https://disabilityjustice.org/right-to-self-determination-freedom-from-involuntary-sterilization/

[Dan Schiavetta]

Eugenics is "true", in the sense that by selective breeding one can increase desirable characteristics and extinguish (or at least minimize the frequency of) undesirable. That's how, over millenia, we have domesticated various animals. Encouraging "imbeciles" to breed, and sterilizing geniuses, will result in a stupider population. Fortunately behavior is a function of evolution too, and we've come to a consensus that it's better to have a more compassionate society, even if it includes mentally disabled people, or for that matter people who live for years in an unhealthy condition requiring expensive medical care.

[Krychek_2]

Except intelligence is not a heritable trait. I remember one of my biology professors telling us that people of low intelligence can have genius offspring and vice versa.

One could, I suppose, argue that an "imbecile" is less likely to have good parenting skills, which in turn means that their offspring are more likely to have problems requiring state involvement. But that's nurture, not nature.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The reason we are smarter than Australopithecus is due to selective breeding. The smarter hominids got to reproduce more, probably because they didn't ineptly walk into death situations before finding a mate.

Intelligence is hard to measure, and attempts to "improve the race" have been laughably clumsy and ill-informed, but in theory it could be done.

[defaultdotxbe]

That doesn't mean there are no hereditary factors. For example two brown haired parents can have a blonde or redheaded child, due to some genes being recessive, and multiple genes often being needed to activate certain traits.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" Except intelligence is not a heritable trait. "

That seems an unwarranted unqualified assertion.

[Krychek_2]

Not as between individual parents and children, and for a more detailed discussion I recommend The Red Queen by Matt Ridley. (He may be a libertarian but he still does good science.) And in Buck v. Bell the court was talking about passing a trait from a parent to a child, otherwise their opinion would have made no sense.

captcrisis is correct that over many generations it has an impact on a species as a whole. But not within a single generation. And certainly not like hair color or eye color.

[David Nieporent]

Except intelligence is not a heritable trait.

Of course it is.

I remember one of my biology professors telling us that people of low intelligence can have genius offspring and vice versa.

Yes, because it's the result of a complex combination of genes rather than a single one, and of course nurture plays a role as well.

Would you conclude from the fact that short parents sometimes have tall kids (and vice versa) that height isn't heritable?

[Krychek_2]

No, but you're not distinguishing between "heritable in a single generation" versus "heritable over many generations."

[AmosArch]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. This isn't Harry Potter. Genes in general and intelligence specifically don't *sleep* (at least not in the broad crude pop culture sense) for one generation then decide to wake up the next.

[AmosArch]

Plus even if that argument was true which it is not it wouldn't effect Holmes reasoning. in fact it would make it more convincing.

[AmosArch]

Uh.....intelligence is clearly pretty heritable for any quantitative definition of intelligence. Its true that most of these definitions involve multi factorial genetic inputs and there is a fair bit of nurture involved so 'low intelligence' people can give rise to high intelligence and vice versa but concluding from this that intelligence is not heritable at all is kinda *drum roll* stupid?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I read many many years ago that selective breeding for a single trait not only takes hundreds of generations to take effect, but you lose control of all other traits. Select for more milk, lose control of muscle mass or docility or whatever else might matter.

And quite aside from that, "genius" is an incredibly sloppy umbrella term. Eye color is an easily defined heritable trait; intelligence is not.

Good grief. You'd fail any intelligence test if you think heritable intelligence can be measured like eye color.

[AmosArch]

Selective breeding can work surprisingly quickly. There was a guy who domesticated foxes within his lifetime and I'm pretty sure 'hundreds of generations' of foxes is a bit longer than an average human life. For your second assertion sometimes positive and negative traits are linked, but not always and not necessarily. Sometimes one individual is flat out better than another. Sometimes you can have the best of multiple worlds.

[DaivdBehar]

The lawyer and medical and educational professions get their rent. That is money collected at the point of a gun, and given to people who return nothing of value. That includes huge NICU bills for people who will have to live in expensive institutions. They will not even be nice, but difficult and aggressive.

The entire special ed budget is a scam. Spend a lot of money on education. That deprives brilliant but deprived children of a great education. These brillian children could generate great wealth and tax payments in return. Instead, due to lawyer dumbass tyranny, get a person who will live in jail or on disability. That is just another rent seeking rip off by professionals.

[DaivdBehar]

Now jail is not a rent seeking rip off. You spend $50000 for a life of relative comfort, and prevent 200 crimes a year. That comes to $250 a crime that causes $10000 in damages, each. Much of that damage goes to paying government dependent workers for their worthless paperwork.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Further, you conflate social behavior and evolution with genetics.

Fortunately behavior is a function of evolution too, and we've come to a consensus that it's better to have a more compassionate society,

* Them's morals, not heritable traits.
* Human genetic evolution takes far longer than a single century to have any noticeable effect.
* *Your* idea of a more evolved society is *your* opinion, and not measurable.

Your ignorance is appalling, but absolutely typical of our self-anointed betters.

[DaivdBehar]

Human evolution takes dozens of years, not 1000's of years. Good looking people, with big chests have a lot of more children. Walk around a mall. Compare to your class pictures from 40 years ago, and those circus churls that sat next to you.

[apedad]

Á àß, mostly agree with you but isn't there a branch of evolution that conflates morals?

Something like it's genetic that humans (and animals) have a sense of 'family' and it's abnormal to want to have sex your mother.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/201210/the-problem-incest

[Dan Schiavetta]

I blocked A aB a long time ago, but I’ll respond to you.

What I meant is that ethics themselves are products of natural selection. Prehistoric tribes that developed the Golden Rule stayed together, while those that didn’t fell apart (or maybe never got together in the first place). Ethics evolve just as species do.

[F.D. Wolf]

The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11 [1905].

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927)

Isn't it, though, Justice Holmes?

[DaivdBehar]

As with all remedies, the dose response curve must be described. Too little, you get devastating families that really damage the neighborhood, and cause $millions in costs. Too much, you get Nazi extermination of innocent people who hurt no one. It is more complicated and difficult to find the correct formula than your comment suggests.

The sole judge who resisted the Nazis should be far more famous in the US. He was the guradian of many disabled people in institutions. Many death certificates started to cross his desk. He issued a warrant for arrest for murder to the Nazi Governor of the jurisdiction. The judge did not last long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_Kreyssig

[F.D. Wolf]

The only acceptable level of population control with which the government should (or can) be entrusted is none

Eugenics, the idea that the human race can be improved through selective breeding, is garbage pseudoscience inextricably linked to scientific racism. No good can ever come of even dabbling with it.

[DaivdBehar]

Wolfie. That is the extreme view of a rent seeker. How much of your income or that of your employer comes from government? You need to disclose that for credibility.

[F.D. Wolf]

Being against forced government sterilization is "extreme"?

And "rent seekers" support government ventures; they don't oppose them. That's how you get those fat government contracts.

[DaivdBehar]

AI is rapidly improving. It may replace all intellectual work as well as machines replaced physical labor. As machines are 100 times better than living beings at any task, there will be no competition.

The sole hope for humanity is CRISPR-cas 9 technology. Talent is unpredictable, is extraordinary. It cannot be explained how a 7 year Mozart wrote a mature symphony, or how a young Einstein found correct natural formulas without data, or how Paul McCartney produced those melodies. Those talents need to be located and implanted in humans. That is the sole hope of competing with machines. No machine has yet shown talent.

We will all be the Bucks, and very soon.

[David Nieporent]

Left unsaid in the discussion above is that the entire premise was a lie. Buck wasn't an "imbecile." She was a rape victim. But since she got pregnant, she was promiscuous and must be feeble minded. There's no evidence she or her daughter were so afflicted at all. (I'm less sure about her mother.)

[not guilty]

Buck v. Bell has never been overruled. When Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health is decided, will Buck be cited for the proposition that who reproduces or not is properly a governmental decision?