Today in Supreme Court History: July 11, 1921

7/11/1921: Chief Justice William Howard Taft takes oath.

Chief Justice William Howard Taft

 

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Organized Village of Kake v. Egan, 80 S.Ct. 33 (decided July 11, 1959): Brennan grants restraining order preventing Alaska from enforcing statute criminalizing fish traps against Native American tribe because Secretary of Interior had granted exemption and its livelihood depended on them. (Question on full appeal was whether the Secretary’s authority superseded Alaska’s. The Alaska Supreme Court ended up ruling against the Native Americans, and the Court affirmed in 1962, 369 U.S. 60, in which Frankfurter, in one of his last majority opinions, derided traps as a “lazy man’s device”, though he extended Brennan’s stay to the end of that fishing season.)

Rockefeller v. Socialist Workers Party, 400 U.S. 1201 (decided July 11, 1970): Harlan grants stay of the District Court’s order striking down on Equal Protection grounds requirement that the 12,000 voters needed for petition for statewide ballot include at least 50 voters from each county because it overvalued votes in less populous counties (i.e., giving those counties disproportionate veto power over who gets onto the ballot) (the least populous county, Hamilton, had only 1/500th the population of the most, Kings/Brooklyn) (order was affirmed by the Court without opinion on October 12 of that year, 400 U.S. 806, though the District Court’s decision shows that the Socialist Party lost on other issues)

[Krayt]

Traps are a lazy man's way of fishing...if you are sport fishing.

If you are living off the land, not so much. If this was quasi-industrial fishing for sale, screw the feds, bulling their way around for a lot longer than the US has been a country.

[Krayt]

My aunt lived in Alaska, and would come back every year with two suitcases of frozen salmon that she caught.

I was quite disappointed to find out she caught them with nets, not poles, which we had done the one time we went to visit her.

It seems like non-Inuit state citizens get a halfway state where they can net up to X salmon a year. Anything beyond that, sport fishing.

My hero ????

[Mark Regan]

The tribes in Kake and Angoon are Tlingit Indian, while the tribe in Metlakatla is Tsimshian Indian. No Inuit there.

Non-Native residents of rural Alaska communities are welcome to participate in subsistence fisheries.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Frankfurter knew only sport fishermen. The Native Americans were fishing for survival. I should have put that in there but you anticipated me!

[Syd Henderson]

I was looking for a dissent by Taft among those cases and found it in Adkins v Children's Hospital. Taft had progressive roots and they showed there, and, unfortunately, Buck v. Bell.

[Krychek_2]

The idea that the state has the right to make your reproductive choices for you is not a progressive idea, dude.

[David Nieporent]

It was in the early part of the 20th century.

[GKHoffman]

Eugenics was a progressive goal at that time as well. Because science!

[Frank Drackman]

It still is, part of why Down's Syndrome is going the way of Pitchers hitting, you know, they'll have shorter than average life expectancy, lower than average intelligence, don't apply it to other Demographic groups though.

[Magister]

Progressives did not all support eugenics, and eugenics was not universally about forced sterilization; some of it was about racist immigration restrictions. Progressives also supported Prohibition, as part of an agenda of moral improvement.

But they were right about a host of issues, such as trust busting, regulating large corporations, government efficiency, universal education, conservation, and labor laws. Modern progressives have improved, and their opponents have gotten steadily worse.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Liberals were guided by science, in particular the theory of evolution. Some of them moved toward eugenics because the science seemed to tell them so. However a better understanding of science (in particular psychology as applied to evolution) leads one away from it.

[Krychek_2]

Y'all are missing the point about what is and is not progressive. It comes down to who decides. Whether sterilization or lobotomies were good policy is a separate question from who gets to decide. It's the forced part -- the patient had no real say -- that makes it not progressive. Forced sterilization and lobotomies were the right wing position for the same reason that an abortion ban and a ban on gender affirming care is the right wing position -- in all cases, it's the state making medical decisions for people.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Y’all are missing the point about what is and is not progressive."

You are missing the difference in what "progressive" meant in 1920 versus what it means in 2023.

Progressive in the early 20th century was a reform movement, it had adherents in both parties.

Did you not take any history classes?

[Krychek_2]

Even in the 1920s there was spirited debate about who had the right to choose. Giving the state the right to make one's medical decisions was not progressive, not even in 1920.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Which progressive giant said this in 1930:

“Finally, that pernicious practice must be condemned which closely touches upon the natural right of man to enter matrimony but affects also in a real way the welfare of the offspring. For there are some who over solicitous for the cause of eugenics, not only give salutary counsel for more certainly procuring the strength and health of the future child – which, indeed, is not contrary to right reason – but put eugenics before aims of a higher order, and by public authority wish to prevent from marrying all those whom, even though naturally fit for marriage, they consider, according to the norms and conjectures of their investigations, would, through hereditary transmission, bring forth defective offspring. And more, they wish to legislate to deprive these of that natural faculty by medical action despite their unwillingness; and this they do not propose as an infliction of grave punishment under the authority of the state for a crime committed, not to prevent future crimes by guilty persons, but against every right and good they wish the civil authority to arrogate to itself a power over a faculty which it never had and can never legitimately possess.”

(a) Oliver Wendell Holmes (b) Woodrow Wilson (c) Margaret Sanger (d) Pope Pius XI

[Krychek_2]

And keep in mind that science is limited to explaining how to do things and what practical results will follow; it is not equipped to say whether something *should* be done. Science can tell you how to make a nuclear bomb that will kill a million people but it cannot tell you whether you *should* make a nuclear bomb that will kill a million people. That question belongs to other disciplines. So the problem isn't science. The problem is science unmoored from human rights.

[bernard11]

Liberals were guided by science, in particular the theory of evolution. Some of them moved toward eugenics because the science seemed to tell them so.

That was a gross misunderstanding of evolution, not to mention morality.

[Dan Schiavetta]

What they failed to understand (perhaps because psychology was in its infancy) was that behavior is just as much a product of natural selection as is the inheritance of physical characteristics or mental capacity. Some behaviors work (and survive) and others don’t (and get extinguished). Societies that developed a sense of fairness, of taking care of the less able, have flourished and those that didn’t, didn’t. To take a basic example, prehistoric tribes that developed the Golden Rule (do unto others . . .) stayed together and advanced, for reasons we can all guess, while those that didn’t, fell apart (or maybe never got together in the first place).

[Jmaie]

This feels like a bit of interpreting history through the lens of existence today. And it depends greatly on your definition of flourishing - I'd bet a lot of folks a hundred years ago would have said that the march of science (including eugenics) was proof of American greatness. Meanwhile China today could currently be thought of as flourishing...

[Dan Schiavetta]

One thing that has always been true of Communism is that it guarantees a safety net.

[SRG]

In contrast to Taft's substantial build, his great-grandson Tucker is a lean and very good masters' track athlete.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Taft was undertaking a heavy responsibility.

[Dan Schiavetta]

On a history test in high school I didn’t know the answer to “How did President Taft break up the trusts?” So I put, “He sat on them.” Zero credit!

[Mr. Bumble]

You're starting to sound like Dr. Ed.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Dr. Ed taught high school social studies and he would have given you a point for humor -- and knowing about Taft's size.

[Jmaie]

"You’re starting to sound like Dr. Ed."

Thankfully, he's not.

[John F. Carr]

Both Dr. Ed 2 and captcrisis act like human beings rather than lawyers or monomaniacal chatbots.

[Dr. Ed 2]

“Rockefeller v. Socialist Workers Party, 400 U.S. 1201 (decided July 11, 1970): Harlan grants stay of the District Court’s order striking down on Equal Protection grounds requirement that the 12,000 voters needed for petition for statewide ballot include at least 50 voters from each county because it overvalued votes in less populous counties (i.e., giving those counties disproportionate veto power over who gets onto the ballot)”

Maine is dealing with a similar problem right now — the population is so concentrated in Southern Maine that activists can get all their signatures for referendums outside a Portland shopping center, much to the chagrin of the other 4/5ths of the state.

One proposal which probably would pass muster would be to require that half of the signatures be collected in each of the two Congressional Districts.

[Magister]

What does 4/5ths of the state mean? According to Wikipedia, the Greater Portland metropolitan area has over half a million people, which is significantly more than 20%. Conservatives love to talk square miles rather than people, but people vote and empty land does not.

Ultimately all of the voters decide on any referendum, and the rural fraction could put forward their own referendum (albeit less conveniently due to sparse population, but it's that sort of inconvenience that makes cities popular).

[Mr. Bumble]

Because "the science" and experts don't you know.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Hence the concept of requiring half the signatures from each Congressional district, which are equal in population but not size. See: https://get-direction.com/images/usa/maine/maine-congressional-districts-2016.png

[Mr. Bumble]

Spencer used the term after reading Darwin.