Today in Supreme Court History: February 17, 1801

2/17/1801: House of Representatives breaks tie in Electoral College, and selects Thomas Jefferson as President.

Thomas Jefferson

Comments

[Mr. Bumble]

Did I miss something? What does this have to do with the SC?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Not surprising. South Texas College Of Law Houston standards.

(It is surprising that Georgetown is associated with this level of shoddy academic work, but even strong institutions make hiring mistakes periodically, and should expect their reputations to be diminished when that occurs.)

[SMP0328]

Blackman should call this type of article "Today in Legal History."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Why ignore Prof. Barnett's involvement?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (decided February 17, 1936): confessions "extorted by brutality and violence" violated Due Process under Fourteenth Amendment (illiterate black men accused of killing white planter were "pre-hanged" to extort confessions; rope marks on their necks were visible at trial)

Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (decided February 17, 1964): applies Baker v. Carr, 1961 (one person, one vote in state legislatures) to House of Representatives and invalidates redistricting in Georgia where one Congressional district had three times as many people as neighboring districts; in dissent Harlan points out that several one-district states have far less people than any one Georgia district and argues that Court cannot tell Congress how to constitute itself

United States v. Healy, 376 U.S. 75 (decided February 17, 1964): Federal Kidnaping Act applies to air travel and does not require monetary motive (defendants hijacked private plane to Cuba, in effect kidnaping pilot)

Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., 330 U.S. 148 (decided February 17, 1947): trainees alleging inadequate wages (they were given only an allowance for expenses) were not "employees" so as to bring Fair Labor Standards Act suit; railroad did not have obligation to hire them at end of two-week training and they were free to go work for another railroad

Smith v. O'Grady, 312 U.S. 329 (decided February 17, 1941): habeas granted to prisoner denied counsel who agreed to plead guilty without ever being told what the charges were

[John F. Carr]

If the summary of U.S. v. Healy appeals to you, I recommend the book The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. When I was young the notion of hijacking planes to Cuba was in the air, a subject of jokes and plotlines, but it didn't seem to happen any more. By the early 1970s the fun and games of 1960s hijacking was seen as turning dangerous and wasteful. Modern airport security was born and the age of hijacking was over.

Those who made it to Cuba were disappointed. Castro did not welcome them as anti-capitalist heroes.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks as always. I was in high school during the skyjacking era but I did not know of Castro’s muted response. Probably he didn’t want the world to think of his regime as a bunch of international criminals.

Then there was the opposite story, the ones who tried to escape Cuba by hiding in the wheelwells of airplanes, only to freeze to death in the stratosphere, achieving their dream when their frozen bodies fell from the sky in places like Indiana.

[SRG]

Smith v O'Grady is an astonishing one.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/312/329.html

Smith isn't informed of the charges against him, pleads guilty nonetheless on the understanding he'd get three years, is then sentenced to 20 years because he finds out after his guilty plea he pleaded guilty to burglary with explosives and that he'd been lied to and still can't get a copy of the charges.

Nebraska courts didn't seem to find anything wrong with this.

I can't help wondering whether in the unlikely - but not impossible - event of such a case nowadays, between AEDPA and the current Supreme Court, his petition would have been chucked out on the grounds of "fuck off".

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Nebraska in 1941 might have been a bit lacking in the "administration of justice" context.

I began to modify Nebraska with "backwater," given the involvement of Valley County (county seat: Ord), but then recognized that the entirety of Nebraska consists of backwaters.

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, the Irony, 200 years later another "tie" in the Electrical College, broken by a separate branch, and in both cases the VP would go on to shoot somebody, and the loser would sulk for the next 20 years (at least Adams didn't go around screaming about Global Warming)

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ummmm.....

Jefferson defeated Adams 73-65.

The tie was between Jefferson & Burr, who'd run as a ticket, with both getting 73 votes. (This before the 12th Amendment.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

Interestingly, if slaves were not counted in apportionment, Adams would have defeated Jefferson in 1800, by a slight margin. This would have changed history quite a bit.

[Martinned]

That's always the point that people don't get about the 3/5th clause. Whether it was a "bad thing" or not depends on what you think the counterfactual was. Counting slaves as full people would have been worse for them, not counting them at all would have been better.

[Dan Schiavetta]

It is very damaging when a black politician says, "The Framers considered me to be three-fifths of a person!" It shows a measure of ignorance. For white politicians, ignorance is not a handicap (for some time on the Republican side it's actually been an advantage). For a black politician, unfortunately, it's deadly.

[Frank Drackman]

Like the idiot Georgia Black State Senator (Emanuel Jones, drop him a line at
[e-mail] <[e-mail])
who called Clarence "Frogman" Thomas an "Uncle Tom" but had to admit he didn't know the origin of the term. And that's not race-ist Frank saying that, it's "Newsweek" (amazed they're still around"

Here's the Money Shot
"Jones called Thomas an "Uncle Tom," an expression he said the Black community uses to describe a person of color who is "betraying his own community." Jones admitted that he does not know the origins of the term."

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Amazing how many ed-jew-ma-cated peoples get that part wrong, it was the Yankees that didn't want to count the Slaves. (Don't get me started on the Emancipation Proclamation, which just like the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" didn't reduce inflation, didn't emancipate a single Slave)

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Capitol likely would have been further north, possibly remaining in NYC.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That agreement was made before 1800. In fact Adams was the first President to live in the White House.

This is well depicted in the “John Adams” miniseries. As John and Abigail are moving in, they see plantation-style slaves doing the drudgery of construction. For Abigail, who had only seen slaves only occasionally in Massachusetts, as butlers and maids, it’s a shock. She says, “What good can come from a house built in such a way?”

[Frank Drackman]

"Pig Virus" was the best John Adams ever (and a pretty good Einstein on the current commercial)

[The Angry Hippopotamus]

I believe you mean Pig Vomit

[John F. Carr]

A politically unsound but instructive experiment for middle or high school history students would be to replicate the negotiations over that clause as a class project. It's a Kobayashi Maru exercise. There is no way to win without compromising modern values. If the students negotiate based on 21st century values you tell them their deal has been repudiated by their home states, the Union dissolves, the British reconquer it piece by piece, and they are hanged as traitors. Or the Southern delegates are hanged immediately by the states they have betrayed.

[Martinned]

There is no way to win without compromising modern values.

Sure there is. Consistent with the modern bible for teaching students about negotiation (I've used it myself for that purpose), the recommendation would be to move from a zero-sum discussion over outcomes to a principles-based discussion.

Proceeding along those lines the principle of apportionment on the basis of the number of ballots cast or on the basis of the number of voters on the electoral register would make the Southern states unhappy, but would be difficult to reject.

[defaultdotxbe]

How does that not compromise modern values? Remember the whole debate a few years ago about counting undocumented immigrants in the census? Apportionment based on ballots cast would mean they (and a lot of other people) don't get counted.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The 1800 election was the end of the Federalist Party in power, they would hang out in the Judiciary and plot secession, leading to the Hartford Convention 15 years later.

[Sarcastr0]

DMN told you that you were wrong. You didn't engage, and then just repeated yourself here like it never happened.

The shit you'll do to hold on to a 'little known fact' that isn't a fact...

[Dan Schiavetta]

don't feed the troll

[Brett Bellmore]

It's always pathetic when your side doesn't win a 100% victory in the first round.

I'm not going to argue that 0/5ths wouldn't have been better than 3/5ths, and 5/5ths worse. Obviously, that's what makes it the 3/5ths compromise.

I would argue that the abolitionists got everything they were in a position to get at the time. Sure, would have been better if the 13th amendment had been adopted as part of the Bill of Rights right at the beginning, too.

But getting mad that the first step doesn't land you at the end of your journey seems childish.