Today in Supreme Court History: September 7, 1958

9/7/1958: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas denied the Little Rock School Board's petition to suspend its integration program. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), the Supreme Court ordered the integration of Central High School.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Uhler v. AFL-CIO, 105 S.Ct. 5 (decided September 7, 1984): Rehnquist says federal courts have no jurisdiction to stay California Supreme Court’s striking from the ballot a referendum requiring the legislature to apply to Congress for Constitutional Convention to add a “Balanced Budget Amendment”; California court had held that under Article V of the U.S. Constitution a Convention can be called only by the State Legislatures on their own initiative (and not as directed by referendum) and also that referendum was improper under the California Constitution (the Balanced Budget Amendment, pushed by Reagan-era Republicans — a new definition of “chutzpah” — fell two states short of the two-thirds required under Article V, and also failed to make it via the other Article V route, passage of two-thirds of each House of Congress)

[Michael P]

Misusing a word does not give it "a new definition".

[Dan Schiavetta]

Hardly a misuse. Republicans applauded record-breaking deficits while pushing for a balanced budget amendment. This is not a proposition than can be debated.

[Magister]

The classic definition of chutzpah is a man who kills his parents and then appeals for mercy because he is an orphan. Republicans create new definitions regularly.

[Syd Henderson]

An example, not a definition.

[Magister]

Take it up with Leo Rosten.

Or Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh:

The most famous definition of "chutzpah" is, of course, itself law-themed: chutzpah is when a man kills both his parents and begs the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.

https://www2.law.ucla.edu/Volokh/yiddish.htm

[Dilan Esper]

No movie review? I was expecting "Debbie Does Dallas" today.

[Magister]

Porn is generally reviewed on Sundays.

[Mr. Bumble]

Please, don't encourage him.

[Dan Schiavetta]

today’s movie review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1945

Based on Betty Smith’s 1943 novel (which I’ve read) about growing up in 1910-era Brooklyn, with horses and mules outnumbering cars. Katie (Dorothy McGuire) works as a seamstress to support her children, Francie and Neeley, while her husband (James Dunn, an Oscar) works as a “singing waiter” and is often “sick” (drunk). (This reminds me of John Steinbeck’s 1932 story “The Pastures of Heaven”, where the father frolicks as a traveling salesman and comes home to charm the kids, while the homebound mother does all the shitwork and is the “enforcer”.) The low-key early scenes only make the poverty and hardship more striking — the kids can’t be as old as 10 but scrounge the streets and already know how not to get fooled into buying old meat and how to pry an extra penny for the rags they collect. When the aunt is about to visit the boy casually mentions her two dead babies and it’s almost as casual when the girl downstairs dies of a fever. Katie saves pennies for the insurance man on his monthly visit and we find that it’s burial insurance, so that they don’t end up in Potter’s Field like the girl downstairs.

The story is told through the eyes of Francie, who gets her ability to “dream” from her father. She gets books from the (free) public library and is inspired by the better (public) school she gets transferred to. (At the first school neither the teacher nor the other students have any patience for the questions of a gifted child — see the Veronica Cartwright scene from the Route 66 episode “Love Is a Skinny Kid” — I know the feeling.) She wants to be a writer which Katie thinks is impractical (which it is) but her grandmother, who sounds like she's from Eastern Europe, says that in this country one can advance because of the free public schooling. They all agree on the value of a high school diploma.

I was struck by the use (or nonuse) of music. In my view music is used too much in movies. Here, when something tragic happens or there is bad news, there are no swelling violins, no mournful piano. Instead there is silence, or the faint ridiculous sounds of the hurdy-gurdy out on the street. Nor are there big crying scenes, shouting and blubbering. With tragedy so common one can’t go through paroxysms every time something happens. A lot of families probably became “dead” to it.

In the middle of the movie your heart gets torn out. Katie finds she’s pregnant (she and Johnny knows this is bad news — another mouth to feed!); they realize Francie has to quit school to work; they have to move to an even smaller apartment upstairs; and Johnny, quitting drinking, goes out into the winter streets to find honest work, but collapses while waiting to get called as a sandhog (look it up — a horrible job) and, compromised by cirrhosis, dies of pneumonia. Katie pleads with the coroner to leave alcoholism off the death certificate, so that the children will have a better memory of their father, and the coroner reluctantly agrees.

At Johnny’s funeral Katie is surprised by the big turnout and realizes how much of a gift he was to those who knew him, his wit, music, jokes, and one sees that this is how even poor people can get through life. At the end we see Katie’s transformation from a humorless martinet to someone who can laugh and have a good (or at least decent) time.

But this is only because of a (commercially necessary) contrived ending which is based on some improbable luck. Katie is not well as she goes into labor, and has only Francie to attend to her (she can’t afford go to to the hospital or even hire a midwife– in that neighborhood nobody could). We’re set up to see her die with her child. But she survives and the baby is healthy; the owner of the bar Johnny hung out at offers the children after-school jobs, so that Francie and her brother stay in school and graduate; and the local cop proposes marriage, and with a steady income the family moves out of the tenement. More likely Katie (if she survived childbirth) would have to continue to scrounge and just get older and crabbier.

A movie made in 1945 could not include some of the more horrible scenes in the book, such as the pedophile who attacks Francie.

One imagines this movie being seen in 1945 by middle-aged people who thought, “Yes, that’s the way it was”, as their sons were fighting overseas. And thankful for the changes in society (and public policy), made in possible I suppose by the “we’re all in this together” spirit of the New Deal and World War II. Today one thinks of all the things we have that that family didn’t have, things we take for granted. And are thankful for the things that we don’t have to worry about anymore, except rarely. For example losing a young child, which today is considered the most horrible thing that can happen (it happened to my own parents, though I was too young to remember it). But in those days it was all too common, wherever people lived in poverty.

I mentioned before that there was no operatic-style emoting. But by our standards pretty much everyone in this film is over-acting. Does it matter?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"the local cop proposes marriage, and with a steady income the family moves out of the tenement"

And the cop is assigned to the red-light district, and the family moves into a mansion.

/just kidding

[Dan Schiavetta]

ha!

Seriously — the book had passages that were considered “racy” at the time, particularly as to the aunt (played in the movie by Joan Blondell), a nympho who it’s implied kills a series of boyfriends/husbands by over-f**king them to death.

The book was largely autobiographical.

[Mr. Bumble]

They've always been rare, given that there have only been 27 in 234 years. Deduct the first 10 that were passed almost immediately and the two prohibition amendments and they are even rarer.

[Magister]

They've never been as rare as Haley's comet, though, since the longest gap is from the 12th to 13th amendments (61 years). Twelve adopted in the 20th century, with the longest gap being 21 years between 26th and 27th amendments and it's now over 31 years since the 27th (which is already an odd one because it was proposed in the 18th century and revived 200 years later). Even just seventeen amendments (excluding the Bill of Rights) in 234 years would average one every 14 years.

The huge gaps on either side of the Civil War might reflect the polarization of slavery before and Reconstruction after.

I wonder if an amendment to fix the number of Supreme Court seats could reach a compromise. If liberals get the numbers to undo the current majority by expanding it, they might accept a limit if it were tied to forcing retirements at regular intervals and requiring prompter votes from the Senate on nominees, rather than start competing expansions every time control of Congress and the Presidency changes. They'd have to get some concession that would end the current extremely conservative majority sooner than waiting for enough conservatives to die.