Post Category → Ginsberg

Question & Thought for January 18th, 2016!

Question & Thought for January 18th, 2016!
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
1. Question – What did Oliver Brown do with his daughter Linda in 1950 that challenged the Supreme Court to look into segregated education?
2. Thought – Oliver Brown, the father of three girls, lived “across the tracks” in a low-income, racially mixed Topeka neighborhood. Every school morning, Linda Brown took the school bus to the Monroe School for black children about a mile away. In September 1950, Oliver Brown took Linda to the all-white Summer School, which was actually closer to home, to enter her into third grade in defiance of state law and local segregation rules. When they were refused, Brown took his case to the NAACP, and soon thereafter Brown v. Board of Education was born. In mid-1953, the Court announced that the several cases on their way up would be re-agued within a set of questions having to do with the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. Almost exactly a year later, the Court responded to those questions in one of the most important decisions in its history.
In deciding the case, the Court, to the surprise of many, basically rejected as inconclusive all the learned arguments about the intent and the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and committed itself to considering only the consequences of segregation:
Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal opportunities? We believe that it does…We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Institutional Principle: The Brown decision altered the constitutional framework by giving the government the power to intervene against the discriminatory actions of state and local governments and some aspects of the private sector.
Amendment XIV Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (AMERICAN THINK GOVERNMENT by Lowi, Ginsberg & Shepsle)
rem – I had no knowledge that I had no knowledge.
Question & Thought & ANDs.

Question & Thought for the last day of September 2015!!!

Question & Thought for the last day of September 2015!!!
See Ya September!
1. Question – Should civil liberties vary between our states?
2. Thought – From a constitutional standpoint, the defeat of the South in the Civil War settled one question and raised another. It probably settled forever the question of whether secession was an option for any state. After 1865 there was to be  more “united” than “states” to the United States. But this left unanswered just how much the states were obliged to obey the Constitution and, in particular, the Bill of Rights. Just reading the words of the Fourteenth Amendment, anyone might think it was almost perfectly designed to impose the Bill of Rights on the states and thereby to reverse Barron v. Baltimore. The very first words of the Fourteenth Amendment point in that direction:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
​This provides for a single national citizenship, and at a minimum that means that civil liberties should not vary drastically from state to state. That would seem to be the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment: to nationalize the Bill of Rights by nationalizing the definition of citizenship.
This interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is reinforced by the next clause of the Amendment:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
(Barron v. Baltimore confirmed “dual citizenship” – that is, that each American was a citizen of the national government and separately a citizen of one of the states. This meant that the Bill of Rights did not apply to decisions or to procedures of state (or local) governments. Even slavery could continue, because the Bill of Rights could not protect anyone from state laws treating people as property. In fact, the Bill of Rights did not become a vital instrument for the extension of civil liberties for anyone until after a bloody civil war and a revolutionary Fourteenth Amendment intervened. And even so, as we shall see, nearly another century would pass before the Bill of Rights would truly come into its own.) (AMERICAN Think GOVERNMENT by Theodore Lowi, Benjamin Ginsberg & Kenneth Shepsle)
​”Justice is the end of government.
It is the end of civil society.
It ever has been and ever will be pursued
Until it be obtained.
Or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” (James Madison; The Federalist, No. 51)

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rem – know the why or lose the way! 
Question & Thought & ANDs.