Today in Supreme Court History: March 16, 1925

3/16/25: Pierce v. Society of Sisters argued.

Comments

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

This recalls busing to my mind. IF I say , who cares more for kids than their parents,some will point to dysfunctional families but not make the logical connection: we must start strengthen man-woman traditional families and children. So many issues from bad education to homelessness find their ROOT cause in the breakdown of the family,.
I still recommend the recently -re-released "Men and Marriage" by George Gilder ,to students.

[JasonT20]

I still recommend the recently -re-released “Men and Marriage” by George Gilder ,to students.

From reading a summary on its Amazon page, it looks like its argument is that traditional gender roles are good for society and blurring the lines to allow for more individual freedom to diverge from them is tearing society apart. That an accurate summation?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (decided March 16, 1810): awarding land to purchaser in good faith, unaware that seller had obtained it by fraud

Shaughnessy v. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206 (decided March 16, 1953): not a denial of due process to detain “bad security risk” alien at Ellis Island without hearing where no other country would receive him (the story given of this man’s wanderings and unexplained rejection by every country he visited, including Communist ones, is remarkable -- he was finally released in 1954 when Ellis Island closed down) (holding was superseded by statute, see Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 2020)

Williamson v. Daniel, 25 U.S. 568 (decided March 16, 1827): Marshall for once attributes some humanity to slaves by holding that, in a dispute over apportionment of a decedent’s slaves, the child slaves follow their mother

Mason v. Matilda, 25 U.S. 590 (decided March 16, 1827): this time it’s Johnson, ruling against a mother and her children suing for their freedom; Court holds in favor of defendant (widow of original owner), even though Virginia law provided for emancipation if no compliance with 60-day registration requirement for bringing slaves into the state; “constructive registration” (my phrase) because he had openly possessed the mother for 22 years, during which she had given birth to the three co-plaintiffs

United States v. Gooding, 25 U.S. 460 (decided March 16, 1827): upholding conviction for slave trade “abetting” even though ship not yet fitted out for slave transport

Ornelas v. Ruiz, 161 U.S. 502 (decided March 16, 1896): ordering extradition of men who crossed from Texas into Mexico, killed Mexican soldiers (apparently as part of a rebellion against the Díaz government), then came back into Texas; not a “political question” (I wonder if it’s relevant that the United States supported Díaz)

Albertson v. Millard, 345 U.S. 242 (decided March 16, 1953): remanding to state court question of whether Michigan statute regulating Communist Party activities (state Attorney General prepared list, restricted access to space on ballot, etc.) was Constitutional (the Michigan Supreme Court then struck down the statute, holding that the field of anti-sedition legislation had been preempted by federal law, 345 Mich. 519, 1956)

Crancer v. Lowdon, 315 U.S. 631 (decided March 16, 1942): Are rings that protect pipe threads during transit (thrown away upon use) “scrap iron” or “pipe fittings” for the purpose of ICC tariffs? Bench trial verdict was pipe fittings. Court affirms.

Garland v. Washington, 232 U.S. 642 (decided March 16, 1914): convicted of stealing “$1,000 in lawful money of the United States”, and then convicted of stealing “a check payable for the sum of $1,000 in money”; sounds like double jeopardy to me, but the argument was that there was no arraignment or plea before second trial, an argument the Court rejects

Grant Bros. Constr. Co. v. United States, 232 U.S. 647 (decided March 16, 1914): affirming a jury verdict for violating law prohibiting importing persons for contract labor; this was a civil action so leeway given to government on evidentiary matters (e.g., reading into evidence depositions of absent witnesses)

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

IANAL, but I am curious. Who owns stolen property?

Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (decided March 16, 1810): awarding land to purchaser in good faith, unaware that seller had obtained it by fraud

First guess is that if a thief is caught red-handed with stolen property, say a shoplifter or a burglar loading up his car, the property still belongs to the victim, but it might need to be kept as evidence.

What if the property is found at the thief’s home a week or month later? My guess is that it still belongs to the victims, but it might be harder to prove who they are, complicated by multiple victims with similar property without serial numbers, such catalytic converters or wheels.

But what if insurance companies have already paid the victims? Do they now own the recovered property?

Or if the thief goes to prison and pays fines, does that mean he now has paid for the property and owns it? I bet not.

What if the thief is convicted, it’s proven the property is stolen, but they can’t identify the owner? Does the thief get to keep it, even if he admits stealing it?

[Drewski]

Generally it belongs to its original owner. If sold to a good-faith buyer it belongs to the buyer. The original owner is entitled to the larger of the value of the item or payment amount, which can be awarded by criminal restitution or a civil claim. Some buyers (e.g. pawn shops in many states) have a duty to check whether an item has been reported stolen before purchase.

If the owner cannot be found, items of value are generally auctioned and the money held in trust for a period defined by law, after which the state can keep it (through a process called escheatment) while worthless items are discarded. These laws vary by jurisdiction so some may be wildly different, but I think all states at least have a version of this. (Police auctions are a great place to buy tools and bicycles - but not cars, because they come with salvage titles.)

If insurance has paid out, they're entitled to seek restitution in the victim's name, but they don't have an actual claim to the property. I believe they can attempt to claw back payment if the item is returned to its owner but I'm not sure how that works in practice.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

[John F. Carr]

There are some details that vary by jurisdiction.

Under the common law one had to sue to recover property. The statute of limitations would run while the stolen property was visible to the public.

Under the Uniform Commercial Code the good faith purchaser exception applies when an item is bought from a business that regularly deals in that kind of item. Example: Book stores get credit for unsold books returned to the publisher or distributor. The system allows only the cover of a mass market paperback to be returned on condition that the rest of the book be destroyed. A bookstore in Pennsylvania was sued for selling "stripped" (coverless) books. Under the UCC the buyer got good title despite the publisher's arguably superior claim.

Under some laws one must deliver found property to police who will hold it for a year. If nobody shows up to claim it the finder keeps it. (I have assumed that valuable found property will be claimed by a friend of a police officer rather than returned.) The UK, England and Wales at least, has a crime called "theft by finding."

In my state there are two grades of salvage titles. "Salvage repairable" means the car can be registered after it is repaired. "Salvage parts-only" means the car can never be registered again. A car with a salvage title can't be insured against property damage. If you need a beater and like working on cars, a salvage title may be a good deal. If you get to look at the car first. Some auctions don't allow inspection.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

[SRG2]

Some of you may have come across the term "market overt": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_overt

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

An interesting look at how laws change with the times.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Thanks for all the answers. Not sure how I feel about some of the methods, but I can't think of any obvious better methods. It's just a messy situation.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Garland v. Washington, 232 U.S. 642 (decided March 16, 1914): convicted of stealing “$1,000 in lawful money of the United States”, and then convicted of stealing “a check payable for the sum of $1,000 in money”; sounds like double jeopardy to me, but the argument was that there was no arraignment or plea before second trial, an argument the Court rejects

You’re skipped a pretty important detail which explains why there’s no jeopardy problem: after the first trial, the conviction was vacated when he moved for a new trial.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks! The Court doesn't say who moved for a new trial but it must have been defendant.

[Noscitur a sociis]

There’s (a very little) more detail in the opinion below:

The defendant was convicted of the crime of grand larceny. He appeals from a judgment pronounced upon the verdict of a jury.

It appears that this is the second trial of the case upon the same state of facts. The defendant was found guilty upon the first trial, but upon his motion the court granted a new trial. The reason for granting this motion does not appear from the record, but appellant states that the motion ‘was granted because of fatal variance and other reasons.’

State v. Garland, 118 P. 107, 108 (Wash. 1911).

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Pierce v. Society of Sisters declared the right of parents to send their children to private school, though the state could impose minimal standards.

Paula Abrams' book Cross purposes: Pierce v. Society of Sisters and the struggle over compulsory public education (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009) gives the history of the case and of the anti-private-school law in Oregon which the decision struck down. It seems like the Oregon Klan, plus most of the Oregon Masons (with some prominent Masonic dissents) pushed an initiative to stop parents from sending their kids to private schools. The successful challengers of the law were a Catholic school and a private military academy.

[Dr. Ed 2]

See: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0508.html

[Dr. Ed 2]

This one loads better: https://thomasnast.com/cartoons/the-american-river-ganges/

[JasonT20]

Pierce v. Society of Sisters declared the right of parents to send their children to private school, though the state could impose minimal standards.

I agree wholeheartedly with this result. The concept of parental rights is based on the obvious truth that parents are usually the best situated to understand their children's needs and that they are the most motivated to attend to them.

However, "usually" is the operative word here. The state should presume that parents have their children's best interests in mind and have the basic competence to see to those needs, unless sufficient evidence to the contrary appears. That is because children are not the property of their parents and have their own rights as individual human beings.

When it comes to education, most, if not all, states declare that children have the right to an adequate, free, public education. Again, that is a right of the children that parents are presumed to want to see provided to their children. If parents think that their children would receive a better education outside of the free, public schools, they should absolutely be able to do that. And as the decision held, the state can require private schools (or homeschooling) to meet certain minimum standards without infringing on the parents' rights to direct their children's education.

Of course, the conservative/libertarian alliance for "school choice" goes well beyond all of this. Its position that it isn't just that parents have a right to direct their children's education, but that they have a right to use the same public funds to do so that are used in the state-run, free, public schools. And, that they are entitled to these funds with the same minimal oversight that applied to private schools and homeschooling when parents had to use their own money.

I am not just making that up as a talking point, either. This is exactly how it works in Florida right now. This past school year, every family, regardless of income, was able to apply for a voucher to use for private schooling (House Bill 1 from the 2023 legislative session). Participating schools are required to test the students attending with vouchers, but may use any one of a dozen or so nationally available tests rather than the tests developed by the state for public school students. A report is created every year by an academic research group at Florida State University. From the report:

This report does not compare the performance of FES [Florida Empowerment Scholarship - one of the voucher programs] students to public school students. Due to the difference in the tests that each group takes, such a comparison may not be valid.

Compliance with the testing requirement is lower than for public schools, which scramble to ensure that they get 98% of each student subgroup tested in order for their school grade not to be penalized. The most recent FES report I quoted shows 90.0% of students at participating schools had scores reported. Private schools that don't send scores must send notarized explanations of why they did not have the scores, plus some schools close before the end of the school year.

[David Nieporent]

Of course, the conservative/libertarian alliance for “school choice” goes well beyond all of this. Its position that it isn’t just that parents have a right to direct their children’s education, but that they have a right to use the same public funds to do so that are used in the state-run, free, public schools. And, that they are entitled to these funds with the same minimal oversight that applied to private schools and homeschooling when parents had to use their own money.

As a certified libertarian-in-favor-of-school-choice, I don't think anyone has a "right" to a voucher, and I've never heard others suggest that either. Just that it was a good idea, compared to trapping people in schools based solely on the location of their homes, schools with less-than-minimal oversight.

[JasonT20]

Regular public schools do not have "less-than-minimal oversight," especially in Florida. In fact, they get school 'grades' A-F based mostly on test scores. (High school grades also include things like graduation rate and the number of students that earn "acceleration" of some sort. That can be passing AP tests, industry certifications, and so on.) The data that is available for each school is posted in easy to find places.

https://www.fldoe.org/accountability/accountability-reporting/school-grades/

The private schools participating in vouchers don't have to make the data from the tests the voucher students have to take available to the public. I don't think that they even have to list basic demographic information publicly.

As for trapping people in schools based solely on the location of their homes, I don't expect that vouchers do much to change that. That is simply due to where the 'good' and 'bad' schools are. 'Good' schools are mostly the ones in affluent neighborhoods, while 'bad' schools are mostly in the poorest neighborhoods. (Also invariably the areas with the highest minority populations. Coincidentally, I'm sure.) Parents and would-be parents obviously look to see how good the schools are near a home before they buy. If they have the money to live anywhere, they'd certainly choose the area with the best schools. School choice has always existed for those with the money (and right skin color) to choose where to live.

Vouchers and choice programs that give parents the ability to send their kids to any public school they want don't really enable children living in poverty to attend the best schools that are in the affluent neighborhoods, public or private. That is because they would still need to find a way to get there. The busing that started undoing decades of segregation got enough of a backlash from white middle class parents in the 80s that it mostly went away by the time I was in high school in the later part of that decade.

Politicians on the right routinely talk about the children living in poverty or near poverty 'trapped' in 'failing' public schools and then present school choice as the magic bullet. That has definitely helped Florida Republicans cut a little into the part of the Democratic Party base made up of lower income Black and Latino parents. But I don't see evidence that it really solves much for those people. For one thing, the report on the choice programs note how 80% of the students using the scholarships that had previously attended public schools attended a public school with a letter grade of A,B, or C. Thus, only ~20% of the students were 'escaping' a 'failing' school.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Hmmm...why would parents want to take their kids out of a "C" school? /sarc

[JasonT20]

Assuming that they could get their child into a better school, that makes perfect sense. But why would ~20% of the voucher recipients leave "A" schools and another ~20% leave "B" schools? A lot of my point is that we don't know whether kids receiving vouchers are actually in better schools than they otherwise would be. (Especially since the vouchers are now available to students that have always been in private schools.)

Are you really so comfortable with taxpayer money going to schools that you have so little information about? I doubt it. I see so many that talk about too much spending on entitlements, welfare, and so on assuming that it is wasteful and that people should just work harder rather than suckle at the government teat. But, somehow, giving parents checks to send their kids to whatever school they want with negligible accountability is great.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“Are you really so comfortable with taxpayer money going to schools that you have so little information about?”

You seem to think that objection applies only to private schools.

I’m actually quite a fan of the idea of tax-funded education, if it produces good results. Since I can’t measure other parents’ schools, and the schools themselves will simply pump out self-serving propaganda, I have to rely on those parents to discern what the educational results in each school actually are. In particular, I would look to those schools parents are fleeing from, and those they’re fleeing *to,* to get a rough idea of which schools are doing better.

Bottom line: Although, like any caring and sharing citizen, I want kids to get a good education, it's the parents who have the most immediate stake in whether their kids get a good education or not. You comment below about teachers making a rational choice to work in good schools and avoid bad ones; I simply extend that logic to parents who want their kids to go to good schools and avoid bad ones.

[JasonT20]

You seem to think that objection applies only to private schools.

It does only apply to private schools, because only private schools can keep that information from being available to the public.

In particular, I would look to those schools parents are fleeing from, and those they’re fleeing *to,* to get a rough idea of which schools are doing better.

And this leads to the whole other problem with school choice that its advocates never seem to answer. The choice part of school choice works both ways. It isn't just the parents choosing. Private schools can choose their students as well. A parent can look at a private school that is very popular and want to send their kid there. But having a voucher won't mean that it will accept that student. The top private schools in any city do advertise their success with data, because they want the best students to go there. Of course, that means that the students from low income families that aren't already doing great in school won't get in, voucher or not.

Private schools have the luxury of being able to cater to only the best students if they want to.

[David Nieporent]

Regular public schools do not have “less-than-minimal oversight,” especially in Florida. In fact, they get school ‘grades’ A-F based mostly on test scores. (High school grades also include things like graduation rate and the number of students that earn “acceleration” of some sort. That can be passing AP tests, industry certifications, and so on.) The data that is available for each school is posted in easy to find places.

Yes, and what happens when the schools do badly on that grading system? Nothing, because people are assigned to that school by the government whether it's doing a good job or not.

The private schools participating in vouchers don’t have to make the data from the tests the voucher students have to take available to the public. I don’t think that they even have to list basic demographic information publicly.

And parents don't have to send their kids to the schools that refuse to disclose such basic information about the schools.

[JasonT20]

Yes, and what happens when the schools do badly on that grading system?

Earning an "F" multiple years in a row can result in the school being taken over by the state. There is also a positive incentive for the faculty at a school where they can earn small bonuses if the school's grade goes up or maintains an "A".

People don't want to work at a school that is constantly getting a low grade. The idea that most people are inherently lazy and don't give a shit that their school constantly gets Ds and Fs unless they could get fired is not based on any human psychology that I recognize. Good teachers looking for a job will look first at schools with high grades. New teachers that are talented and smart will do the same, and good teachers at a bad school will usually look to find a better school to work at. That is plenty of incentive for people that stay at the school to try and improve. No one wants to stay on a sinking ship.

And parents don’t have to send their kids to the schools that refuse to disclose such basic information about the schools.

That's true, they don't. So why do they?

I always wonder what, exactly, people think parents want their children to escape when they talk about escaping "failing" public schools. Schools with better test scores and other measures of success will undoubtedly have better teachers, but why? Some of it is because of the thinking I describe above, but is wanting to be on a winning team really all there is to it? Of course not.

Teachers also know that being at a high-poverty, high-minority school means a great deal more stress and more work. Often, so much more that the risk of burning out or harming their own mental and physical health is a real danger. Not to mention questions of physical safety at schools with more drugs and more violence.

I think it might have been in the documentary "Waiting for Superman" that I heard a parent describe his reason for wanting his child to go to a charter school. He said that he had been walking past a regular public school and saw kids throwing textbooks out of the 2nd story window and laughing. He didn't want his child to have to go to school with the "book throwers."

If this is what parents are avoiding when they choose private schools or charters, then that is not a solution that respects the right for all children to receive a quality education. That is because the "book throwers" end up being left in the regular public schools along with any children whose parents were not able to use school choice to help them escape. Not to mention that those "book throwers" have a right to an education also and might not behave so poorly if they aren't in a school with so many other children with behavioral problems or parents unable or unwilling to control them.

The data is also clear that 'choice' schools, whether private or charters, serve substantially fewer students with disabilities, students with behavior problems, and students still learning English. That is, they serve fewer of the students that require more resources and assistance than the average student. The exception to that are the schools that specialize in assisting students with disabilities, but those vouchers are typically worth a lot more as they are aimed at students that can't function in a mainstream classroom with students without disabilities.