Today in Supreme Court History: May 8, 1884

5/8/1884: President Harry S. Truman's birthday. He would make four appointments to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Vinson, and Justices Burton, Clark, and Minton.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

United States v. Ju Toy, 198 U.S. 253 (decided May 8, 1905): Chinese national applying for admission to U.S. not entitled to judicial trial.

Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (decided May 8, 1967): set up a procedure (including an "Anders brief") for a criminal defense attorney who wishes to withdraw from a case because he doesn't believe there's a meritorious ground for appeal; purpose is to protect the rights of the defendant.

Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 787 (decided May 8, 1967): First and Fourteenth Amendment precluded convictions for sale of dirty books, because no claim that they harmed juveniles, were "obtrusive" on the newsstand, or were "pandering" (i.e., "purveying of publications openly advertised to appeal to the customers' erotic interest"). If anyone can tell me what this means in today's terms, let me know!

Teamsters Union v. Hanke, 339 U.S. 470 (decided May 8, 1950): State could forbid union picketing of car dealership run by owner with no employees (the dealer's main business was in after-hours sales and the union was trying to get him to restrict to union hours).

Mintz v. Baldwin, 289 U.S. 346 (decided May 8, 1933): a State, despite the interstate commerce clause, may require any cattle being transported into the state to be accompanied by a certificate showing free of disease.

American Communications Ass'n v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (decided May 8, 1950): upheld statute requiring any union going to the NLRB to certify that their officers are not Communists.

[DaivdBehar]

What a list of time wasting rent seeking nitpicky decisions. Get rid of this garbage court. They are are a waste of money. Idiots wasting tax dollars.

Cappy, your alternate blogging is useful at showing the bottomless stupidity, toxicity, and waste of the failed lawyer hierarchy. They stink.

[Dilan Esper]

The real importance of Redrup is it started the era, which ended with Miller and Paris Adult Theater several years later, where SCOTUS would view the adult movies in the Court's movie theater and decide whether they were obscene or not.

Apparently once Justice Marshall, who had a great sense of humor, joined the Court, "movie nights" were hilarious as Marshall called "play by play" for the other Justices.

[Baloo]

Redrup actually seems to summarize modern jurisprudence on obscenity more than that if the stated description is correct. Miller, Slayton and Ferber v New York all stand for the principle that third-party harms must exist for obscenity to be criminalized, can't be solely on moral grounds. Unless you read Slayton's that regulating for a decent society is more than what the court calls a "morally neutral" judgment. Slayton's reasoning is terrible though. See Prof. Gerard V. Bradley - Moral Constitutionalism

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ha! I remember that.

Only Black refused to watch. "'No' to me means 'no'!"

[DaivdBehar]

Perhaps, it is a coincidence. Europe began to allow more nudity, and progressively more graphic depictions. I think the Justices summer in Europe, and return to impose European cultural changes on our nation.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The point captcrisis advances repeatedly and vividly is that this white, male, right-wing blog regularly presents shit-rate scholarship.

Is this polemical, downscale blog's academic veneer still vanishingly thin -- or does it no longer amount to even that much?

Let this mockery and disparagement be a lesson to Georgetown -- or any other school considering emulating our weakest schools by hiring movement conservatives for faculty positions.

(If there is a god, Mick Taylor is the most likely name of that god, and Skunk Baxter is at least a seraph, a cherub, or something. Skunk Baxter is one intensely blessed motherfucker with a guitar in his hands.)

[DaivdBehar]

Rev. You talkin' but still not doin'. Y ou need to STFU.

[F.D. Wolf]

It is perhaps ironic that, from a conservative perspective, that Truman's Court appointments were much better than Eisenhower's (to put it mildly), and all four of his picks might be fairly categorized as conservatives who tended to favor judicial restraint.

When Truman nominated his attorney general Tom Clark to the Court, many thought (and said) he would just be a Truman crony on the bench, so many were surprised when Justice Clark voted against Truman in the Steel Seizure case. (Truman's picks split 2-2 in the case, with only Vinson and Minton, along with Justice Stanley Reed, being the only three justices to back the President's actions).

[Cal Cetín]

"all four of his picks might be fairly categorized as conservatives who tended to favor judicial restraint"

Or we could say "consistent New Dealers" who wanted a big federal government across the board, so in addition to regulating the economy like the "liberal" Hugo Black wanted, it could restrict civil liberties in the name of national security like...well, like the "liberal" Hugo Black wanted in the Japanese exclusion case.

After the Warren Court, conservatives, who tend to pick up recently-discarded liberal ideas and use them against the newest liberal ideas, preached judicial restraint and adopted what had been liberal arguments. So by the magic of hindsight, justices who wanted to empower the President to seize the steel plants without (or contrary to) Congress - are now conservatives.

[Cal Cetín]

Conservatives keep telling liberals, "hey, that idea you just abandoned was pretty good, we should keep doing that instead of the latest thing you're doing."

They're basically like liberals, going in the same direction, but slower.

[Cal Cetín]

Flagged my own comment by mistake - well, maybe the blog's Board of Censors will relax their usual highly rigorous standards and let this one pass.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Unless you are making fun of conservatives or using derogatory terms about conservatives, the record indicates you are safe with respect to the Volokh Conspiracy Board of Censors.

Poke fun at conservatives, though, and Prof. Volokh will cue up The Ballad Of Artie Ray Lee Wayne Jim-Bob (aka Pfft You Were Gone).

Was that Jerry Reed? What could be better than that?

[F.D. Wolf]

My late father cast his first presidential vote for Thomas Dewey in 1944. He and my grandfather had an exceptionally low opinion of the Democratic party in general and Franklin Roosevelt in particular, which I have, for the most part, inherited.

The Supreme Court did not create the New Deal, and I do not see its role as saving voters from the consequences of their decisions. I do not believe that a law is unconstitutional because I do not like it or that it is foolhardy or even ultimately destructive.

And I characterize judges who feel likewise as "conservative". I'll take a Fred Vinson over an Earl Warren any day.

[Cal Cetín]

Warren certainly issued some howlers of decisions. One nice thing he and his cohorts did was to declare that most of the Bill of Rights expressed fundamental liberty principles binding on the states, not just the feds. I'd have preferred they'd used the Privileges and Immunities Clause for that, but in any case, they weren't trying to save the majority from its own decisions, but to protect the minority from oppression by the majority.

It's hard for me to accept that Mr. Duncan received his privileges and immunities as a U. S. citizen when he was sent to prison by a judge sitting without a jury. So I'm glad the Warren Court defended trial by jury in this context.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/391/145