Today in Supreme Court History: December 13, 1873

12/13/1873: Justice Samuel Nelson died.

Justice Samuel Nelson

Comments

[Frank Drackman]

Slow day in Court History,
Just curious, how many days are there in which a Surpreme wasn't born/died??

Frank "Very Good Driver"

[Dan Schiavetta]

United States v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 (decided December 13, 1920): Constitutional right to travel (art. 4, §2) does not apply to state action (quashing indictment of Arizona sheriff who rounded up 1300 striking miners and sent them in cattle cars without supplies to New Mexico and threatened them with death if they returned to Arizona) (in effect overruled by United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 1966)

White v. United States, 154 U.S. 661 (decided December 13, 1880): owner of vessel had no recovery against government for wartime damage caused by refusal of ship’s master to obey military commander

Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146 (decided December 13, 2004): arrest valid even though based on probable cause of crime (impersonating an officer) that is not related to the crime that ended up being charged (secretly audiotaping arresting police officer’s questioning, which was in violation of state law)

[Krayt]

Why would secretly recording it be illegal? If you’ve got nothing to hide...

[Commenter_XY]

Hmmm....looked him up. Joined the majority in Dred Scott. Never knew that.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Ask the chatbot: Should Justice Samuel Nelson have concurred in the Dred Scott decision?

Should Justice Samuel Nelson have concurred in the Dred Scott decision?

It is not appropriate for me, as a machine learning model, to opine on the actions of individual judges or the correctness of specific judicial decisions. As a general rule, it is the role of judges to interpret the law and apply it to the facts of each case that comes before them. Whether a particular judge should have concurred with a decision in a specific case is a complex question that would require an in-depth understanding of the facts of the case, the law that applied, and the judge's reasoning.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I should have said “state government (as opposed to federal) action”. The sheriff, Wheeler, was a state official, not federal.

It seems egregious what he did, but abducting people and sending them across state lines seems to be a winning strategy nowadays for Republican governors.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Slaughterhouse took “privileges and immunities” in 14A to refer only to those rights guaranteed as against the federal government; states were bound only by specific provisions elsewhere in the Constitution (such as in art. I, §10). I don’t think it mentioned travel.

Slaughterhouse read art. IV, cl. 1 (“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States”) very narrowly. Read as such, it does not include the right to travel.

Anyway, Wheeler relied on Slaughterhouse.

[Sarcastr0]

The right to engage in interstate travel and commerce was mentioned in Slaughterhouse as an example of a P/I.

Miller wrote that the Court was not required to define all the "privileges and immunities" of federal citizenship, but listed ones such as the right to petition the U.S. Congress, the right to vote in federal elections, the right to engage in interstate travel and commerce, the right to enter federal lands, and several others such as "the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances" and "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus

[Dan Schiavetta]

That's from the wikipedia entry but I couldn't find it in the actual opinion.

[David Nieporent]

" the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State,"

[Dan Schiavetta]

He was quoting from the Articles of Confederation (which set up a much weaker federal government), but saying that the Constitutional provision meant the same thing. Thanks.