Today in Supreme Court History: September 10, 1949

9/10/1949: Justice Wiley Rutledge dies.

Justice Wiley Rutledge

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Williams v. Rhodes, 89 S.Ct. 1 (decided September 10, 1968): Stewart, after conferring with other Justices, directs that George Wallace and his “American Independent Party” be put onto the Ohio ballot; the full Court then held that Ohio laws making it almost impossible for third party candidates to get onto the ballot violated Equal Protection, 393 U.S. 23 (Oct. 15, 1968)

Meredith v. Fair, 83 S.Ct. 10 (decided September 10, 1962): Black vacates numerous stays issued by the same judge and allows James Meredith, whom the Circuit Court had ruled was wrongfully excluded because of his race, to enroll in the University of Mississippi (Meredith, a Republican from the days when it was still the Party of Lincoln, stayed in the party and served as advisor to people like Jesse Helms; I wonder how much they listened to him)

[Mr. Bumble]

So, when in your expert opinion did the Republicans cease to be the "party of Lincoln"?

[Magister]

Bumble appears to be clumsily lining up what he imagines is a gotcha.

Meredith was born in 1933; presumably Republicans were still the party of Lincoln when he reached adulthood. Hmm, what could have happened subsequently that would make Republicans not the party of Lincoln? Note that Jesse Helms started off working for Democratic politicians who favored segregation; the civil rights era and Nixon's Southern Strategy shifted those politicians from the Democratic party to the Republican party (many by retirement, with their proteges like Helms then running as Republicans, but some explicitly, like Strom Thurmond). Confederate flags are now generally associated with supporters of Republicans, and Trump seems to think it surprising that Lincoln was a Republican.

Other answers are possible but would have occurred before Meredith was born.

[Magister]

Sarcastr0 has provided some of those other answers below.

[David Nieporent]

Note that Jackie Robinson was also a Republican. He supported the GOP at least up through 1960, when he endorsed Nixon over Kennedy (though he was upset that Nixon didn't show support for MLKJ when the latter was in prison and JFK did). But he supported the Rockefeller wing of the party in 1964, and finally gave up when Goldwater prevailed over him for leadership of the party.

[Dan Schiavetta]

For years I worked next to a black attorney who was active in civil rights. In 1968 he was offered the Republican nomination for the local Congressional seat (he turned it down in favor of another black man).

[Brett Bellmore]

That again. It's already been pointed out that almost all Dixicrats stayed Democratic until their deaths, it was their children who became Republicans.

You seem to think flags are significant. I think support for racial discrimination is more of a big deal, and that's still a Democratic mainstay, even if you've changed who you want to discriminate in favor of.

[Sarcastr0]

You're just wrong.

Strom Thurmond
John Connally
Trent Lott
Jesse Helms came up working on Democratic campaigns, but ran as a Republican in 1972.

[Brett Bellmore]

And it's STILL the case that most of the Dixicrats stayed Democrats. It's still the case that the South didn't become reliably Republican until they died out. It's still the case that the Democratic party, unlike the Republican, still advocates systematic racial discrimination.

The fact that you'd discriminate against different people today is no defense. You just didn't have it in you to reject racism, the best you could do was redirect it.

[Sarcastr0]

From almost all to most. Your narrative is crumbling.

Changing parties is risky. A lot of racists were lazy.

This doesn't show that the Dems Are the Real Racists, nor that the GOP didn't purposefully pivot to being the party of white racists.

The argument that Affirmative Action is the Dems saying 'Jim Crow was awesome but lets do it against Whites' is a comforting illusion from the person who wants all the white resentment the GOP has pivoted to.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, what demonstrates that Dems are the Real Racists is that you to this day demand racial discrimination. You just can't stop it. You just can't give up racially discriminating, because you don't think racial discrimination is fundamentally wrong.

You think it depends on who is on the receiving end of it.

[Sarcastr0]

No new goalposts. You are denying the Southern strategy and the political realignment of the racists to the GOP.

Your attempt to switch to attacking DEI is clumsy and I’m not having it.

[Brett Bellmore]

"You are denying the Southern strategy and the political realignment of the racists to the GOP."

Well, duh. I'm denying what I'm denying, OMG, that must mean I'm wrong!

Who said anything about DEI? I was talking about racial preferences and quotas.

[Sarcastr0]

You understand you’re still describing your own deflection, yes?

Your only support was a statement you had to immediately walk back, and a bunch of pointing left that isn't on point.

[TwelveInchPianist]

“ From almost all to most. Your narrative is crumbling.”

Lol. That’s a strange definition of crumbling. All but four is almost all.

[Magister]

I listed the case of Jesse Helms (who did actually serve locally as a Democrat, worked for a Democrat in Congress, and then ran as a Republican). Yes, there were relatively few party switchers among elected Southern Democrats, and I only said "some explicitly"; the more common case was that they retired and were replaced by Republicans who had previously worked as Democrats for them, like Helms. (Nowadays the usual mechanism would be for them to lose a primary.) Their voters pivoted in pretty short order; the South promptly switched from consistently Democratic to consistently Republican between the late 50s and the 70s, with a detour through segregationist candidates.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Bumble appears to be clumsily lining up what he imagines is a gotcha."
No, I asked a simple question based on capt's claim which no one answered, including capt (he must still have me muted).

[Magister]

I answered your question. Although I cannot say what captcrisis believes, it's pretty obvious from the mention of Meredith that it was still the party of Lincoln within his lifetime, and no longer the case by at least the time he worked for Jesse Helms.

Bumble is a simple person, who probably wanted to set up the gotcha that Brett Bellmore attempted. Or maybe he's so lazy and stupid he couldn't figure out the obvious implication.

[Mr. Bumble]

Piss off, wanker. It was a simple question addressed to capt pussy muter. He didn't answer and neither did you.
Perhaps I should have been more specific: In what year did the Republican party stop being the party of Lincoln?

[Magister]

The gotcha turns out to be even stupider than I could have imagined. Given a year, I'm sure Bumble would be pushing for a month, day, hour and minute.

[SRG2]

Do you think it still is? And if not, when do you think it changed?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Justice Rutledge was a law school dean and court of appeals judge [FDR’s picks for the Supreme Court overall had little previous judicial service] before his short tenure at the Supreme Court.

As Orin Kerr notes, Justice Paul Stevens was his law clerk and wrote a chapter in an interesting collection of essays on different justices. I read it a long time ago. It was an update (1960s) of the version Kerr references. Note: “Allison” is a guy’s name.

Another bit of trivia: Joseph Story also died OTD in 1845.

https://volokh.com/2006/11/06/justice-stevens-on-justice-rutledge/

I watched a few films recently, so here’s another movie review with fewer typos.

Fans of Downfall, the film about Hitler’s final days, might remember the performance of the actress playing Eva Braun.

Juliane Köhler played multiple roles set in the days of Nazi Germany. Nowhere in Africa is a winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. She plays a Jewish émigré, who settles on a farm with her husband (a lawyer) and young daughter (Stefanie Zweig wrote the memoir that is the basis of the film).

Each member of the family adapts differently. The father sees Kenya as a safe harbor but always dreams of returning. The mother hates it at first but grows to like it as a place where she can be herself. The daughter loves it at first sight.

We watch things develop from around 1938-47. Well acted with a good feel of the setting. Roger Ebert loved it. The film provides some insight into how the Africans themselves are reacting to colonization. Nonetheless, the film is mostly from the point of view of the white family.

[Dan Schiavetta]

"Downfall" was a terrific movie. I was going to review it this summer but I didn't have time. Much has been said of Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler but the movie isn't really about him. It's about the fall of Berlin and the people it affected.

What struck me about the movie is that most of the characters in it are not bad people. There are the truly evil like Goebbels, but it's mostly secretaries, scared children, ordinary citizens, and young people who have known nothing but Nazi indoctrination. In other words -- they could have been us. In one scene a pretty teenage "Hitler Youth" girl, seeing the Russians storming down the street, gives her gun to her commanding officer (barely older than she is) and orders him to shoot her. After hesitation he shoots her as she gives the Hitler salute. Then he takes his helmet off and we see his grief -- he loved her. Seeing no other option, he then shoots himself in the head. Such a waste of two young lives!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The actor who plays Goebbels in Downfall has a small role in another WWII film Juliane Köhler was in, Aimée & Jaguar. It also is based on a true story. A somewhat unbelievable one at that.

The Goebbels eventually committed suicide. The mother first killed her children. Her son from her first marriage was not present and survived the war.

[Dan Schiavetta]

He has creepy eyes which are played to great effect in “Downfall”. That film also spends some time on the children. The oldest, Helga, senses something is wrong and resists drinking the “medicine” (a sleeping potion prior to the cyanide).

[SRG2]

Re: the famous scene where Hitler orders out everyone except Keitel, Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf:

Keitel and Jodl: hanged 10/16/1946
Krebs and Burgdorf: suicide 5/2/1945

[Sarcastr0]

So, when in your expert opinion did the Republicans cease to be the “party of Lincoln”?

I want to break this out, because Michael P stumbled onto an interesting inquiry.

That did Lincoln stand for? I'd say 2 main things: an ambition for America to fulfill it's promise as a government of, by, and for the people, as well as addressing the stain of slavery.

-Johnson and Grant between the two of them abandoned Reconstruction, which is already the party moving away from Lincoln's ambition.

-Teddy R. was a Republican. Invited Booker T over once; after the pushback never again. Still, pretty good on race. Certainly better than Wilson. And his populism was of, by, and for the people.

-Taft the younger, aka "Mr. Republican" was not 100% anti-New Deal; that realignment was still coming. He was part of the alignment of the Republicans towards big business. He was also quite isolationist, which is why Ike got into the race

-Eisenhower. Still pro-business, vastly more internationalist, both overtly and much to our later shame covertly. Also really let McCarthy do his thing well after he knew it was bad news. But also into some big government spending - highways, missile and rocketry program.

-Nixon. Now we're beginning to cook some modern GOP stew. He had a policy vision for America not that different from Ike and Truman, but really really really hated the liberals, from hippies to the DNC. Watergate, sabotage of Vietnam peace talks, the Southern Strategy, and rhetoric about putting those longhairs in their place. All anti-the-other-side at a new level. Thank Goodnes McCarthyism had burned out or I can't imagine where he'd have gotten to. He garnered quite an authoritarian following. https://slate.com/podcasts/slow-burn/s1/watergate/e5/true-believers

Reagan. Hopeful, but at least as anti-the-other-side as Nixon. Sure, he and Tip were OK, but the redbaiting returned at a level not seen since McCarthy. And the social conservativism starts to come in here. Plus the Southern Strategy continues, as states rights becomes the Republican watchword, echoing the retreat from Reconstruction from back in the day.

The Bushes domestically largely continued Reagan's domestic push - state's rights (iykwim), anti-minorities, pro Christianity. I remember GWB making intimations about the loyalty of Democrats, both voters and those in Congress. It was a fraught time that I think we forget more than we should.

And so here we are at Trump. As anti- as it gets, with the pro business side being utterly trashed (tariffs, for instance). His policies, so much as he has them, are anti immigrant, anti minority, anti institutional.
The apotheosis of the negative populism Nixon began and Regan supercharged.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Wow, a lot packed into that comment, all correct.

[defaultdotxbe]

Johnson and Grant between the two of them abandoned Reconstruction, which is already the party moving away from Lincoln’s ambition

Johnson was a Democrat who joined Lincoln's ticket under the National Union party in an attempt to put aside the bad blood between the parties. Think arranged marriage between rival kingdoms. Point is he was never a Republican.

Comments on Grant are valid though.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Johnson was not into reconstruction. Grant tried to make it work but it was too hard a task and the nation was getting tired of it.

[bernard11]

Grant tried to make it work but it was too hard a task

It was working all right. In the election of 1876 Tilden(D) conceded the election to Hayes(R) for Hayes' promise to end it.

There was also a lengthy depression going on, which shifted political interest from Reconstruction to the economic situation.

I don't think the Republicans cared very much about Blacks at the time, though the Democrats - especially the southerners - were far worse.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

-Johnson and Grant between the two of them abandoned Reconstruction, which was already the party moving away from Lincoln’s ambition.

I don't think it is fair to combine them in this fashion.

Grant's Administration in various ways worked to support Reconstruction. As noted in another comment, the country as a whole was starting to tire of it, including the Liberal Republican movement in 1872. He never completely "abandoned" it & was not firmly against it like Andrew Johnson was.

Lincoln's Reconstruction plans were pragmatic and were interested in bringing back the South into the Union even if only a small portion of the population swore allegiance. It is only open to conjecture of how he would have handled Reconstruction.

But, he would have been likely to not be as strict as the Radical Republicans. Given his druthers, he probably would have "abandoned" Reconstruction -- including troops in the South (which continued into the 1880s in some limited way) -- before it actually was abandoned.

[Sarcastr0]

Lincoln's reconstruction had some wild ideas - ever hear of Lincoln governments? His idea that if 10% of the population took a loyalty oath, they would be recognized as the government of that state. The idea was that their example (and exemption from emancipation) would catch fire.
Quite a naïve plan. But it also shows he was going for some bank shots. The conjecture of Lincoln's reconstruction has a wide range that does not stint on the weird possibilities.

As to Grant, he legit gave up on reconstruction, inasmuch as the rise of racist paramilitaries required a military response just as he was moving the occupying forces out of the South. He knew what that would mean. But the Republican Party and voters were tired and with the old abolitionists mostly dead or retired, they were not overworried about black people.

[Brett Bellmore]

I suspect Lincoln would today have a rather different reputation if he hadn't been shot. While he certainly was opposed to slavery, he was hardly a revolutionary on the topic, or wildly in favor of racial equality. Remember his support for the Corwin amendment? His desire to resettle freed slaves in Liberia, rather than keep them in the US?

Keeping the federation together was much, much more important to him than freeing blacks, and he only adopted emancipation as a war measure.

On the other hand, once the war was done, his intolerance for resistance to his rule might very well have driven him to take Reconstruction further than the Republicans could bring themselves to. So it could have gone either way.

But I think he would not be nearly as fondly remembered, whether he ended with a reputation for good or ill. Assassinated Presidents tend to get better reputations than their deeds really merit.

[Sarcastr0]

This gets a little Lost Cause Tyrant false narrative, but I’ll engage some.

Lincoln famously *became* revolutionary on the subject of slavery. He knew what the Emancipation Proclamation would do to the War and America and our history. Just ask Frederick Douglass.

Beyond that, I don’t think you can project that Lincoln’s reconstruction would have been racially fraught. Because remember, he was a coalition builder, and while he had ideas, he liked to forge a compromise instead when he could.

As to Lincoln the tyrant. That’s really hard to figure. Especially given the Lost Cause nonsense since then that has distorted the history.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Brett Bellmore is delusional on this, but I don’t think he’s a confederate sympathizer. As far as I can tell, his position is that Lincoln should have recognized the Confederate states’ secession, then had Congress war on them and reconquered them. It’s Lincoln’s failure to do things in exactly the same way, except more stupidly and in effectively, that makes him so despicable, (despite being perhaps the most libertarian president in American history), not his opposition to slavery.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I'll gladly admit that, yes, I think that the government should achieve its ends by constitutional rather than unconstitutional means, even if people who don't actually care about the rule of law think the distinction is pointless.

That said, there ARE little matters like shutting down opposition newspapers and having people thrown in jail without trial, which you'd think somebody auditioning for "most libertarian President in American history" might have refrained from. You must have a very weird idea of libertarianism.

[Sarcastr0]

Following lost cause propaganda isn’t an all or nothing thing.

There was an insurrection. Not all rules were followed. The Republic was saved.

There’s formalist, and there’s stupid.

And of course you get mighty functionalist when Trump does emolumental levels of Presidential graft, or wants to jail his political opposition, or tries to overturn the election.
And you seem to approve of McCarthyism.

Your choices of double standards reveal much.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm unclear what you're denying here. Are you claiming that Lincoln didn't have opposition newspapers closed? Are you claiming he didn't have people jailed?

Or are you just asserting that it's improper to bring such things up?

[Sarcastr0]

I'm claiming that Lincoln wasn't a tyrant, and projecting him as a tyrant in a counterfactual is you bringing your own stuff in there.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, he wasn't a tyrant, aside from, you know, all the tyrannical acts he committed. But if you set those aside, no, he wasn't a tyrant. No tyrant is.

You seem to have trouble with complexities. With the idea that somebody can accomplish something important and very worthwhile, like abolishing slavery, and still have enormous faults.

There's no particular historical question here: Lincoln tried to avert the Civil war by promising to protect slavery. He tried to end the war early with offers of concessions on the topic. He actually IS the author of this letter, and he meant every word of it.

Eventually he found he needed to make the war about slavery, not preserving the federation, in order to make people enthusiastic about fighting and dying in it. Given the war, I'm glad he eventually came around to that point.

But his true cause was making sure the US was a roach motel, not freeing the slaves, and to that end he committed some pretty awful and often unconstitutional acts, and didn't even pretend that he always was obeying the Constitution.

I don't know how Reconstruction would have gone if he hadn't been shot; I can see arguments either way. But I really do doubt he'd have been as historically sanctified as he was, if he hadn't been assassinated.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Yes, I have studied the matter.

The 10% plan was being crafted while the Civil War was still being fought. So, that has to be factored in.

[Sarcastr0]

I just listened to a Yale Course on the the leadup and post-Civil War eras. It was news to me.

There were Unionists in the Confederate states, but I think Lincoln overestimated the social viability of that position, and how the privations of war only strengthen resolve.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That must have been the dramatic and engaging David Blight!

[Sarcastr0]

‘Twas!

Dude loves his poetry.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I’ve always been fascinated by that old style phone on the wall behind him. What if it rings during a lecture? And it’s a wrong number — they think they’re calling Pizza Express? And what if it keeps happening ?

[Sarcastr0]

It was a podcast of his 2009 lecture so never saw the phone.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ok
I saw the Yale "open university" 26-lecture course.

[Sarcastr0]

Fair pushback re: Johnson and Grant, all.

They both failed Reconstruction but in very different ways and for very different reasons.

[Brett Bellmore]

What's wrong with Red baiting? It's at least as defensible as Nazi baiting.

Just because we allied with Stalin to beat Hitler didn't mean the Communists weren't monsters on the same scale as the Nazis.

[Sarcastr0]

Congrats, you are indeed just that kind of asshole, Brett.
Communism being bad doesn't mean redbaiting is good.

As with all redbaiting, you call a TON of stuff Communist that isn't. Just yesterday you called environmentalist communist, and when called on it said 'what, you're mostly on the left!'

That kind of well poisoning fuckery is bad for discourse, and the country.

Your ilk have redbaited so hard and for so long that communist and socialist just mean 'thing I don't like' to the right now.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I am just the sort of asshole who thinks that totalitarian, genocidal ideologies should be treated the same whether 'right' wing or 'left' wing.

If we'd treated the communists among us the way the fascists got treated, we'd be in a much better country today. I say that entirely unapologetically.

My son just got done reading The Crucible. A fantastic piece of propaganda, I have to concede. But as I reminded him, while it was a metaphor for McCarthyism, there was one rather crucial difference: Witches didn't actually exist, while Communists did. And if witches had been real, everybody SHOULD have been hunting them; The thing that makes witch-hunts so bad is that, because their are no witches, you can only go after the innocent.

But communists are very real, and not a bit innocent.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The Soviets had spies here, just like we had spies in the USSR. But Joe McCarthy didn't find any actual Communists. He just waved around nonexistent "lists", created an atmosphere of paranoia, and ruined innocent lives. To quote Churchill, "He ruined a good cause."

[Sarcastr0]

McCarthy was a power hungry bully who used rooting out Communism as a cudgel against anyone and everyone he could.

Eisenhower knew this. And knew how paranoid and toxic it was making American culture. And he decided it was electorally worth it.
It was a very weak choice to make. And it had nothing to do with actual communist infiltration or national security or counterespionage.

It's telling you think hunting communists is a good thing. It isn't. It's thoughtcrime.
Some communists were spies, or plotting violence. Plenty more were just folks who were wrong.

Going after communists, even the real ones, was a dark day for freedom in America. You once again advocate for something authoritarian in the name of liberty.

[bernard11]

The thing that makes witch-hunts so bad is that, because their are no witches, you can only go after the innocent.

You realize that an awful lot of the red-baiting did go after the innocent? And that red-baiting is still acceptable in conservative circles? What do you think Bush was getting at when he called Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU?" What do you think of all the people, including commenters here, who like to call US liberals, or European style social democrats, "Communists?"

One distinction is that, whatever you think of these people, they are not admirers of Stalin, or defenders of his atrocities. (Yes, I'm sure you'll find some idiot.)

But there are people going around waving Nazi flags, yelling about Jews, etc. And they get attention in RW circles. WHat do you think of Nick Fuentes?

[Brett Bellmore]

You realize that a lot more of the 'victims' of red-baiting were guilty than the left cares to admit? The Rosenbergs, for instance? Guilty as hell.

[Sarcastr0]

Anecdotes so you can rationalize one of the most authoritarian times in our history.

The worst libertarian.

Redbaiting was and is a wide wide swath. Do you think Dukakis was communist? The ACLU?
You probably do, because you are a Redbaiting part of the problem.

[bernard11]

a lot more of the ‘victims’ of red-baiting were guilty than the left cares to admit?

Bullshit.

I will say that there are a lot more Nazi sympathizers on the right than you care to admit.

[Brett Bellmore]

And what am I saying? That communist sympathizers should have not been treated any better than Nazi sympathizers were.

BOTH were sympathizers with totalitarian genocidal regimes. BOTH.

[Sarcastr0]

There was no wide hunt or Congressional hearings or blacklisting of Nazi sympathizers

Henry Ford was not hounded out of his job.

In fact, we hired a buncha Nazis IIRC.

So your analogy only proves how utterly wrong you are with your authoritarian thought crime apologia.

[Brett Bellmore]

This revisionist history would probably come as a surprise to the members of the Bund.

[bernard11]

What’s wrong with Red baiting? It’s at least as defensible as Nazi baiting.

Red-baiting in the US accused, falsely, many innocent people of being Communists, resulting in loss of livelihood and worse. Much of it was done without a shred of evidence or, in some instances, because the victim had some remote connection with someone who knew someone. It was serious persecution, and it was informally participated in by a lot of people.

What is your definition of "Nazi baiting?" Widely publicized Senate and House investigations? Or are you talking about criticizing actual Nazis?

[TwelveInchPianist]

“ Red-baiting in the US accused, falsely, many innocent people of being Communists, resulting in loss of livelihood and worse. ”

Sounds like cancel culture.