Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Baker v.. In June 1964, the Supreme Court ruled on appeals from 15 states that had used Baker as a PRECEDENT, holding that both houses of a st
Trang 1establishments; in job opportunities, raises, and promotions; and in the use of public schools (Pub L No 88-352, 78 Stat 241)
While the Freedom Riders traveled across the South, SNCC also pursued voter registra-tion In 1963 Baker went to Mississippi to help with the Freedom Vote, a project of CORE and SNCC The Freedom Vote was a mock election intended to demonstrate that, contrary to the opinions held by many white southerners, blacks were interested in voting Baker assisted the project by speaking at rallies, setting up polling places, and collecting and counting the ballots on voting day The Freedom Vote was a big success: More than 80,000 of the 90,000 people who cast ballots that day were black, even though only around 20,000 blacks were registered for real elections Two years later, in August 1965, the efforts of Baker and thousands
of other activists bore fruit when the Voting Rights Act (Pub L No 89-110, 79 Stat 437) was passed The Voting Rights Act nearly eliminated one of the last ways that had been used to prevent African Americans from voting—the literacy test—by prohibiting its use in states where fewer than 50 percent of eligible voters were registered
In 1964 Baker again helped organize a civil rights group The group was the Mississippi Freedom DEMOCRATIC PARTY (MFDP), begun in response to an established political party, the Mississippi Democratic party The MFDP attempted to represent the state of Mississippi
at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by claiming that, as
an interracial group, it was better able to do so than the all-white Mississippi Democratic party
HUBERT H.HUMPHREY, vicePRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and Walter F Mondale, Minnesota attorney general, suggested a compromise:
Two MFDP members could be named as delegates to the convention, but would not be part of Mississippi’s delegation The MFDP refused this offer, but its request was the catalyst for a new rule passed by the national Demo-cratic party, that all state delegations would have
to be racially mixed
After achieving notable successes in the U.S
civil rights movement, Baker continued to serve as SNCC’s mentor as the organization became involved in protests against theVIETNAM WAR, and
as an advocate for the free speech movement and women’s rights She also worked toward increased civil rights for blacks in other countries,
including the former Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe; South Africa; and Puerto Rico Baker died in New York City on December 13,
1986, her eighty-third birthday By that time, some
of the organizations she had been involved with no longer existed SNCC fell apart after dissension developed over black power, or black indepen-dence from white America The MFDP lasted through the 1967 elections, winning offices in local races, but was no longer needed after African Americans were allowed to join the state Demo-cratic party Baker’s work, however, lives on in a generation of black U.S leaders she nurtured and encouraged, who are able to carry on the struggle for civil andHUMAN RIGHTSworldwide
FURTHER READINGS Collins, Gail 2007 “The Women behind the Men.” The New York Times (September 22) Available online at http:// www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/opinion/22collins.html? _r=1&em&ex=1190606400&en=a20518e610336452&ei= 5087%0A; website home page: http://www.nytimes.com (accessed August 28, 2009).
Dallard, Shyrlee, and Andrew Young 1990 Ella Baker: A Leader behind the Scenes Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett.
Ransby, Barbara 2003 Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press CROSS REFERENCES
School Desegregation; Voting.
BAKER V CARR The ideal ofONE PERSON,ONE VOTEmotivated the founders of the United States of America to establish a census when they drafted the U.S Constitution in 1787 Although that ideal has not yet been fully realized—because the census still undercounts racial and ethnic minorities, among others—the country took a giant step closer to equal representation for every citizen nearly two centuries later, during the era of theCIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT On March 26, 1962, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Baker v Carr,
369 U.S 186, 82 S Ct 691, 7 L Ed 2d 663 (1962), that state legislativeAPPORTIONMENTcases could be reviewed by the federal courts As a result, lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the apportion-ment of legislative districts were filed in many states In a ruling that Chief JusticeEARL WARREN
later called the most important of his tenure on the Court, Justice WILLIAM J BRENNAN JR wrote:
“A citizen’s right to vote free of arbitrary impair-ment by state action has been judicially recog-nized as a right secured by the Constitution.”
478 BAKER V CARR
Trang 2Also significant because it examined the
notion of “political questions” and whether
courts could address them, the Baker v Carr
case became a springboard for future
appor-tionment lawsuits In June 1964, the Supreme
Court ruled on appeals from 15 states that had
used Baker as a PRECEDENT, holding that both
houses of a state legislature must be
appor-tioned substantially on the basis of population
Within two years, every state had taken some
type of apportionment action By the late 1960s,
congressional districts around the country had
been redrawn to meet the Supreme Court’s call
for equal representation, and after the 1970
census, underrepresented urban areas were
finally given an equal voice in Congress
Every decade since 1790, U.S citizens have
complied with the Constitution and counted
themselves Whereas on its simplest level the
census is a means to document historical
changes in the U.S population, it also
deter-mines how federal funds, power, political clout,
and representation are divided, or apportioned,
among the people of the United States The
notion of representation, more specifically equal
representation, compelled Charles W Baker
and other qualified voters in Tennessee to bring
a lawsuit against Tennessee’sSECRETARY OF STATE
Joe C Carr, on the grounds that the state’s 1901 apportionment statute (Acts Tenn 1901, c 122) violated the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT of the Constitution The plaintiffs argued that Ten-nessee’s method of unequally apportioning the members of the general assembly among the state’s 95 counties unconstitutionally deprived people in the state of EQUAL PROTECTIONof the laws and was obsolete because of a significant growth and population shift since 1900
The plaintiffs’ first round in court brought failure when a three-judge panel of the U.S
district court for the Middle District of Tennes-see dismissed their complaint on December 21,
1959 (Baker, 179 F Supp 824) The panel dismissed the complaint on two grounds: (1) that the court lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter because it was aPOLITICAL QUESTIONand (2) that the complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted
The plaintiffs appealed, and on November
21, 1964, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that it had probable jurisdiction in the matter This
State Legislative Apportionment Before Baker v Carr a
a Nebraska has a unicameral legislature (only one legislative chamber), and, therefore, is not represented on this graph Nebraska's
legislature was apportioned by population.
SOURCE: Gordon E Baker, State Constitutions: Reapportionment (New York: National Municipal League, 1960), 5.
Equal apportionment for each unit
1 state
Fixed constitutional apportionment
1 state
Population only
12 states a
Combination of population and area
28 states
Population, but with weighted ratios
7 states
Houses
Fixed constitutional
apportionment
4 states
Apportionment by taxation
1 state
Population, but with weighted ratios
1 state
Population only
19 states a
Combination of
population and area
17 states
Equal
apportionment
for each unit
7 states
Senates
ILLUSTRATION BY GGS CREATIVE RESOURCES REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF GALE,
A PART OF CENGAGE LEARNING.
BAKER V CARR 479
Trang 3decision was significant because before the Supreme Court heard the Baker case, courts had abstained from addressing apportionment issues because they were considered political in nature In the 1946 Supreme Court case Colegrove v Green, 328 U.S 549, 66 S Ct
1198, 90 L Ed 1432 (1946), Justice FELIX FRANKFURTER called apportionment a “political thicket” into which the judiciary should not venture The subsequent ruling in Baker chan-ged that interpretation, stating that federal courts possessed jurisdiction of the subject, that the citizens in Tennessee were entitled to relief, and that the federal district court in the state could settle the challenge to the apportionment statute of Tennessee
In addressing the concern of some of his fellow Supreme Court justices who warned that the matter before them was a political question and therefore not appropriately dealt with in a court of law, Justice Brennan carefully wrote—and rewrote, ten times—his opinion in the 1962 decision Brennan stated: “The mere fact that the suit seeks protection of a political right does not mean it presents a political question Such an objection is little more than a play upon words.” He added that the plaintiffs’
complaint did present aJUSTICIABLE
constitution-al CAUSE OF ACTION and that the Fourteenth Amendment did provide judicial protection to the right asserted Justices Frankfurter andJOHN MARSHALL HARLANdissented, stating that Brennan should not inject the Court “into the clash of political forces and political settlements.” The Court’s 6-2 ruling in favor of the plaintiffs forced state legislatures to reapportion their seats to reflect population shifts before the elections that were to occur in the fall of 1962 It also decreed one person, one vote as part of the United States’ constitutional heritage and opened the door to challenging state voting procedures and malapportionment on constitu-tional grounds
In his book Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age, former president JIMMY CARTER described how revolu-tionary the Baker decision was in the 1960s and how it transformed state politics, especially southern politics Carter wrote that the Georgia state government, like many others, proposed a number of stalling ploys, fake reapportionment plans, and other ways to avoid the shift in political power that the one-person, one-vote ruling had been designed to cause “The
beneficiaries of the [old] system were the ones now charged with changing it,” he wrote “At the same time, they would be reducing drastically the relative voting strength of their own constituents It was understandable that [they] would do everything possible to circum-vent or postpone the effect of the court’s mandate.” Federal judges rejected the bogus plans, however, and by late summer 1962, the state’s political process had been thrown wide open Incumbent politicians were suddenly without districts, and new seats had opened
up In these circumstances, a few weeks before the election, Carter decided to run for the Georgia State Senate
FURTHER READINGS Charles, Guy-Uriel E 2002 “Constitutional Pluralism and Democratic Politics: Reflections on the Interpretive Approach of Baker and Carr.” North Carolina Law Review 80 (May).
“A Final Victory Marks the End of a Career.” 1990 National Law Journal (August 13).
Fuentes-Rohwer, Luis 2002 “Baker’s Promise, Equal Protection, and the Modern Redistricting Revolution:
A Plea for Rationality.” North Carolina Law Review 80 (May).
“Koohi v United States.” 1993 Georgia Law Review 28 (fall) Pushaw, Robert J., Jr 2001 “Bush v Gore: Looking at Baker
v Carr in a Conservative Mirror.” Constitutional Commentary 18 (summer).
Richie, Robert, and Steven Hill 1999 Reflecting All of Us: The Case of Proportional Representation Boston: Beacon.
Rush, Mark E 1993 Does Redistricting Make a Difference? Partisan Representation and Electoral Behavior Balti-more: Johns Hopkins Univ Press.
“Some Implications of Arrow’s Theorem for Voting Rights.”
1995 Stanford Law Review 47 (January).
“The Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs v Yamasaki: The Application of the Political Question Doctrine to Hawaii ’s Public Land Trust Dispute.” 1988 University
of Hawaii Law Review 10 (winter).
“United States v Alvarez-Machain: Waltzing with the Political Question Doctrine ” 1994 Connecticut Law Review 26 (winter).
“U.S Supreme Court.” 1990 National Law Journal (June 4).
“When Restraint Requires Activism.” 1990 Stanford Law Review 42 (July).
CROSS REFERENCES Apportionment; Brennan, William Joseph, Jr.; Equal Protection; Failure to State a Claim; Fourteenth Amend-ment; Frankfurter, Felix; Political Question; Reynolds v Sims; Voting.
BAKKE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE See REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA V
BAKKE
480 BAKKE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE
Trang 4BALANCE SHEET
A comprehensive financial statement that is a
summarized assessment of a company’s accounts
specifying its assets and liabilities A report,
usually prepared by independent auditors or
accountants, which includes a full and complete
statement of all receipts and disbursements of a
particular business A review that shows a general
balance or summation of all accounts without
showing the particular items that make up the
several accounts
BALANCING
A process sometimes used by state and federal
courts in deciding between the competing interests
represented in a case
Used frequently to decide constitutional
cases, balancing is one of two main legal
decision-making methods, the other being
categorization orSTRICT CONSTRUCTION Balancing
involves weighing competing rights against each
other and analyzing the relative strengths of
many factors A balancing decision is dependent
upon the circumstances of each case Therefore,
the outcome is difficult to predict By contrast,
categorization is a classification and labeling
process It involves identifying a right and how
it was infringed upon and analogizing these
findings to a previously decided case or
PRECE-DENT Hence, the outcome is more predictable
Balancing of Competing Interests
in the U.S Supreme Court
Balancing may take one of two forms in cases
before the U.S Supreme Court In the first, the
Court may measure competing interests against
each other and determine which carries the
most weight For example, in New York v
Ferber, 458 U.S 747, 102 S Ct 3348, 73 L Ed
2d 1113 (1982), the Court upheld a statute
criminalizing distribution ofCHILD PORNOGRAPHY
because the evil eliminated by the statute far
outweighed any infringement on free speech
interests In the second form of balancing, the
Court attempts to “strike a balance” between
competing interests Thus, in Tennessee v
Garner, 471 U.S 1, 105 S Ct 1694, 85 L Ed
2d 1 (1985), the Court held that a police officer
may useDEADLY FORCE to stop a fleeing felon if
the officer hasPROBABLE CAUSEto believe that the
suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm
to others In Garner, the Court did not find that
one interest clearly outweighed the other
Instead, both the state’s interest in law enforce-ment and the individual’s interest in being free from harm were weighed in the analysis and given due recognition
Balancing was first used by the U.S
Supreme Court as one of its principal modes
of judicial analysis in the late 1930s and early 1940s when the judiciary began to reject the rigid formalism and mechanical JURISPRUDENCE
characteristic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Before the balancing era began in earnest withLOCHNER V.NEW YORK, 198 U.S 45, 25 S Ct 539, 49 L Ed 937 (1905), the Court held that a New York statute setting maximum work hours was constitutional be-cause such regulation was within the state’s
POLICE POWER In reaching this decision, the Court did not attempt to balance the rights of the individuals against the state’s interests, but it took a straightforward look at the language of the statute and found it valid This earlier Court stated: “The purpose of a statute must be determined from the natural and legal effect
of the language employed It seems to us that the real object and purpose [of the statute]
were simply to regulate the hours of labor between the master and his employees.”
Early proponents of balancing included such prominent Supreme Court justices as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., LOUIS D BRANDEIS, and HARLAN F STONE, all of whom sat on the Court in the early to middle 1900s Holmes, sometimes called the patron saint of the anti-formalist movement, was one of the first to espouse the idea that the law is and should be an evolving product of social experience He assailed the notion that rigid formulas could
be applied to all situations before the Court
“[T]he law is a logical development, like everything else,” he wrote In a similar vein, Brandeis criticized the Court for ignoring contemporary social, political, and economic problems He said, “[W]hether a measure relating to the public WELFARE is arbitrary or unreasonable should be based upon a consideration of relevant facts, actual or possi-ble” (Adams v Tanner, 244 U.S 590, 37 S Ct
662, 61 L Ed 1336 [1917] [Brandeis, J., dissenting]) In another case, he wrote:
“Wheth-er a law enacted in the ex“Wheth-ercise of the police power is justly subject to the charge of being unreasonable or arbitrary can ordinarily be determined only by a consideration of the contemporary conditions, social, industrial,
BALANCING 481
Trang 5and political, of the community to be affected thereby Resort to such facts is necessary, among other things, in order to appreciate the evils sought to be remedied and the possible effects
of the remedy proposed” (Truax v Corrigan,
257 U.S 312, 42 S Ct 124, 66 L Ed 254[1921]
[Brandeis, J., dissenting]) Similarly, Stone forcefully advocated “consideration of all the facts and circumstances” in a case, including societal conditions that affected the parties, the controversy, and the outcome (DiSanto v
Pennsylvania, 273 U.S 34, 47 S Ct 267, 71 L
Ed 524[1927] [Stone, J., dissenting])
The Court uses a balancing approach most often to decide cases where constitutionally protected individual rights conflict with gov-ernmental interests Many of the landmark constitutional cases of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were decided in this manner, including
ROE V.WADE, 410 U.S 113, 93 S Ct 705, 35 L
Ed 2d 47 (1973), which legalized ABORTION In reaching its decision in Roe, the Court found that in the first trimester of pregnancy, a woman’s right to privacy outweighed the state’s interest in protecting health, but in the later stages of pregnancy, the state’s interest gradually outweighed the woman’s
Contrary to popular belief, however, the Court has not used balancing as its primary method of deciding constitutional cases In fact, some of the most important constitutional cases of the twentieth century were decided without any balancing of competing interests
For example, balancing was not used to decide
BROWN V.BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S 483, 74 S
Ct 686, 98 L Ed 873 (1954) (outlawing segregated public schools);GIDEON V.WAINWRIGHT,
372 U.S 335, 83 S Ct 792, 9 L Ed 2d 799 (1963) (guaranteeing indigent defendants appointed counsel in felony cases); andGRISWOLD
V.CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S 479, 85 S Ct 1678, 14
L Ed 2d 510 (1965) (outlawing state laws prohibiting contraceptives)
Balancing has always aroused controversy among legal scholars and judges Critics con-tend that it gives too much discretion to judges and amounts to a USURPATION of the legislative function They maintain that it is a vague and arbitrary method of measuring unequal inter-ests against each other and that it results in unpredictable decision making One vocal critic
of balancing is Justice ANTONIN SCALIA In his dissenting opinion in Bendix Autolite Corp v
Midwesco Enterprises, 486 U.S 888, 108 S Ct
2218, 100 L Ed 2d 896 (1988), he characterized the balancing of competing interests as an illusion “[T]he scale analogy is not really appropriate,” he wrote, “since the interests on both sides are incommensurate It is more like judging whether a particular line is longer than
a particular rock is heavy.”
Scalia’s frontal attack on balancing gained force in the 1990s when Scalia was joined on the Court by other justices who shared his philoso-phy that the Constitution should be construed strictly and literally Evidence that Scalia’s view was held by others on the Court can be found in the 1995 decision Vernonia School District 47J v Acton, 515 U.S.646, 115 S Ct 2386, 132 L Ed 2d 564 (U.S 1995), which held that schools could legally perform random drug tests on student athletes The decision employed a straightforward analysis of the rationality of the school’s policy to conduct random drug tests and dismissed concerns about infringe-ment of the students’ FOURTH AMENDMENT right
to be free from unreasonable searches Writing for the majority, Scalia stated: “The most significant element in this case is that the policy was undertaken in furtherance of the government’s responsibilities, under a public school system, as guardian and tutor of children entrusted to its care.” The Court held that the testing was a type of search that“a reasonable guardian and tutor might undertake.”
Three justices disagreed vehemently Writ-ing for the dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor emphasized her belief that the decision did not give due recognition to the students’ constitu-tional rights and went too far in its broad approval of “intrusive, blanket searches of school children, most of whom are innocent, for evidence of serious wrongdoing.” Under the ruling, she said, students no longer enjoyed
“the Fourth Amendment’s most basic protection: its strong preference for an individu-alized suspicion requirement.”
Justice O’Connor’s dissent in Acton echoed her strong approval of balancing competing interests and assessing a statute’s intrusion on individual rights O’Connor expressed her belief that balancing is an essential step in the Court’s decision-making process, in Employment Divi-sion, Department of Human Resources v Smith,
494 U.S 872, 110 S Ct 1595, 108 L Ed 2d 876 (1990) The respondents in Smith were Native Americans who were fired from their jobs because they ingested peyote as part of a
482 BALANCING
Trang 6religious ceremony The Court held that the
state could deny them unemployment benefits
without violating the Free Exercise Clause of
theFIRST AMENDMENT O’Connor concurred with
the result but took issue with the majority’s
failure to consider the effect the disputed statute
had on the free exercise ofRELIGION.“To me,”
O’Connor wrote, “the sounder approach—the
approach more consistent with our role as
judges to decide each case on its individual
merits—is to apply [a] test in each case to
determine whether the burden on the specific
plaintiffs before us is constitutionally significant
and whether the particular interest asserted
by the State before us is compelling.”
Balancing of Competing Interests in
Other State and Federal Courts
Although the U.S Supreme Court generates
close scrutiny of its decisions when it applies a
balancing test to resolve high-profile or
contro-versial issues before it, it is not the only court
that resolves issues by balancing competing
interests at stake in a legal dispute Indeed, every
day across the country state and federal courts
are asked to balance the competing interests of
litigants in determining the admissibility of
evidence, the appropriateness of a sentence, or
the viability of an appeal
For example, state and FEDERAL RULES OF
EVIDENCE call for the exclusion of relevant
evidence when its probative value is
substantial-ly outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice
or by considerations of undue delay, waste of
time, or the needless presentation of cumulative
or confusing evidence Consequently, before
one party may introduce relevant evidence over
another party’s OBJECTION, the judge must
balance the competing interests that would be
served by excluding or admitting the evidence
in question
State and federalSENTENCINGguidelines also
generally require judges to balance the
aggra-vating andMITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCESunderlying
a criminal offense before imposing a particular
sentence on a DEFENDANT Aggravating factors
are those factors that justify a more severe
punishment and are typically introduced by
the prosecution, victim, or victim’s family
Mitigating factors are those factors that justify
a less severe sentence and are typically
intro-duced by the defendant, the defendant’s
ATTOR-NEY, or WITNESSES speaking on behalf of the
defendant
Finally, appellate courts often ENGAGE in some form of balancing to review the lawfulness
of a lower court decision In addition, to the above examples from the U.S Supreme Court, appellate courts employ a variety of standards of review by which they evaluate the record for error using some form of balancing analysis For example, the substantial evidence standard of review requires appellate courts to determine if
a lower court’s decision was supported by sufficient evidence to avoid being overturned, meaning that the appellate court must weigh the evidence offered by the parties to some extent
Appellate courts applying the arbitrary and capricious standard of review must not only examine the gravity of the alleged arbitrary or capricious conduct in the lower court, but they must also take into consideration any evidence that makes the lower court’s decision reasonable
or justifiable
FURTHER READINGS Alexy, Robert 2003 “Constitutional Rights, Balancing, and Rationality ” Ratio Juris 16, vol 2 (June).
Gottlieb, Stephen E., ed 1993 Public Values in
Constitution-al Law Ann Arbor, MI: Univ of Michigan Press.
McKenna, George 2007 The Constitution: That Delicate Balance New York: Random House.
CROSS REFERENCES Child Pornography; Deadly Force; Fourth Amendment;
Judicial Review; Jurisprudence; Police Power; Precedent;
Probable Cause; Strict Construction.
vBALDWIN, HENRY Henry Baldwin was a prominent Pennsylvania
ATTORNEY and politician who later became an
ASSOCIATE JUSTICE of the U.S Supreme Court, where he served for fourteen years
Descended from an aristocratic British family dating back to the seventeenth century, Baldwin was born January 14, 1780, in New Haven, Connecticut He grew up on a farm near New Haven and later moved to the city to attend Yale College After graduating with honors in 1797, he studied law in Philadelphia with ALEXANDER J DALLAS, a noted attorney
Admitted to the bar a short time later, Baldwin originally planned to establish a practice in Ohio, but instead settled in Pittsburgh He then established a successful law firm with two other young attorneys By his mid-20s, Baldwin had established a reputation as a legal scholar, in part because of his thorough and well-researched law briefs He had also developed
WORDS ARE BUT THE EVIDENCE OF INTENTION;THEIR IMPORT IS THEIR MEANING,TO BE GATHERED FROM THE CONTEXT,AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER
—H ENRY B ALDWIN BALDWIN, HENRY 483
Trang 7an extensive personal law library, which con-tained a large collection of valuable English case reports and was among the finest and largest in the Northeast Furthermore, Baldwin and his law partners were known for their political and civic leadership The three published a news-paper, the Tree of Liberty, which supported the
REPUBLICAN PARTY of western Pennsylvania In addition to his political activities and his law practice, Baldwin found time for business, acting as part-owner of several mills in Pennsylvania and Ohio
After the death of his first wife, Baldwin married Sally Ellicott, and they established a residence in Crawford County, Pennsylvania In
1816 Baldwin was elected representative to the U.S Congress for that area As a congressman, Baldwin was active in trade issues and was a
strong advocate of TARIFF protection He was also involved in mediating boundary disputes between northern and southern states and their representatives He was twice reelected to the House In 1822 he was forced to resign his seat because of illness He returned home to Pennsylvania, where he once again practiced law and was active in local political affairs Baldwin soon became an avid supporter of
ANDREW JACKSON and was a trusted adviser to Jackson concerning Pennsylvania politics After Jackson was elected president in 1828, Baldwin hoped to become secretary of the treasury, but the appointment instead went to Samuel D Ingham The following year, after the death of Justice BUSHROD WASHINGTON, Jackson nomi-nated Baldwin to the U.S Supreme Court, against the wishes of his VICE PRESIDENT,JOHN C
CALHOUN, who preferred another candidate Though Baldwin’s protectionist views created some controversy, he was confirmed by the Senate with only two dissenting votes from southern senators who opposed his policies on tariffs
On the bench, Baldwin was at first a strong supporter of the liberal views of Chief Justice
JOHN MARSHALL but gradually moved toward a more moderate interpretation of the Constitu-tion, favoring neither state sovereignty nor federal supremacy In 1837 he published a pamphlet, A General View of the Origin and Nature of the Constitution and Government of the United States, in which he set forth what he termed his“peculiar views of the Constitution.”
In this work, he emphasized his position as a moderate on the Court, stating that he tended
to take the Constitution “as it is, and to expound it by the accepted rules of interpreta-tion.” Baldwin also believed that the Court must
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1837 A General
View of the Origin and Nature
of the Constitution and Government of the United States
published
1844 Died, Philadelphia, Pa.
1816–22 Represented Pennsylvania in U.S House of Representatives
1829 Nominated to U.S Supreme Court
by Andrew Jackson
1775–83 American
Revolution
1780 Born, New
Haven, Conn.
1787 Pennsylvania ratified U.S.
Constitution
1797 Received LL.D.
from Yale University
Henry Baldwin.
THOMAS SULLY,
COLLECTION OF THE
SUPREME COURT OF
THE UNITED STATES
484 BALDWIN, HENRY
Trang 8be politically sensitive when determining which
powers belonged to the federal government and
which remained with the states
One of Baldwin’s most influential majority
opinions was United States v Arredondo, 31 U.S
691, 6 Pet 691, 8 L Ed 547 (1832), in which the
Court held that PUBLIC POLICY prevented the
government from violating federal land treaties
With respect to the issue of SLAVERY, however,
Baldwin’s views were considered to be much more
radical than those held by other members of the
Court In Groves v Slaughter, 40 U.S 449, 15 Pet
449, 10 L Ed 800 (1841), the Court considered the
constitutionality of a Mississippi provision that
prevented the importation of slaves into the state
The Court ultimately struck down the statute on
technical reasons, but Baldwin, in a separate
opinion, argued that slaves were property as well as
persons and viewed the prohibition as an
obstruction of interstate commerce He was the
sole dissenter in United States v The Schooner
Armistead, 40 U.S 518, 15 Pet 518, 10 L Ed 826
(1841), in which the Court held that slaves who
had mutinied and taken over the slave ship
transporting them from Africa should be set free
Though he did not write an opinion, Baldwin had
earlier maintained that the slaves should be
returned to the custody of the slave traders
As was the practice in the Court at the time,
Baldwin traveled the circuit he represented,
which included Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to
hear cases He heard important cases involving
the construction of a will that made a bequest
for charitable purposes and also presided over
the trial of John F Braddel, who in 1840 was
accused of robbing the mails
In his later years, Baldwin was plagued by
financial and personal difficulties He never fully
recovered from losing a great deal of money
during the depression of 1820 He also suffered
from the failure of several speculative businesses, and he had to support some of his adult children when they got into financial trouble He was eventually forced to sell his renowned personal law library to theLIBRARY OF CONGRESSto raise money
He also published and sold volumes of the opinions he decided while traveling the circuit
At the same time, Baldwin’s behavior became erratic and he was widely reported to be suffering from mental illness While on the bench, he was often restless, inattentive, and abusive to litigants and his fellow justices While on the circuit, he also exhibited bizarre behavior at times, often having coffee and cakes brought to him while he heard cases Chief Justice ROGER B TANEY was reported to be so concerned about Baldwin’s unpredictable behavior that he advised President Jackson not to take action against theBANK OF THE UNITED STATESbecause Baldwin, as presiding judge over the case in Philadelphia, would be unreliable
Baldwin’s tenure on the Court ended on April 21, 1844, when he died of paralysis at the age of sixty-four He was deeply in debt at the time of his death, and friends and family took
up a collection to pay for his funeral expenses
FURTHER READINGS Congressional Quarterly 1989 Guide to the U.S Supreme Court 2d ed Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.
Elliott, Stephen P., ed 1986 A Reference Guide to the United States Supreme Court New York: Facts on File.
Swisher, Carl B 1974 The Taney Period, 1836–1864 Vol 5
of History of the Supreme Court of the United States.
New York: Macmillan.
vBALDWIN, JOSEPH GLOVER Joseph Glover Baldwin achieved prominence as
a jurist and author despite his lack of formal education
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1815 Born near Winchester, Va.
1817 Mississippi gained statehood
1819 Alabama gained statehood
1836 Established legal practice in DeKalb, Miss.
1853 The Flush Times
of Alabama and Mississippi published
1850 California gained statehood
1854 Moved to San Francisco, Ca.
1844–49 Served as Alabama state legislator
1858–62 Served as associate justice
of the California Supreme Court
1861–65 U.S Civil War
1864 Died, San Francisco, Ca.
Trang 9Baldwin was born in January, 1815, near Winchester, Virginia After establishing a legal practice in 1836 in DeKalb, Mississippi, he relocated to Alabama and entered the legislature
of the state in 1844, serving for five years
In 1854 Baldwin moved again, this time to San Francisco He maintained a successful practice and was involved in the formulation
of the judicial system of San Francisco He officially entered the judiciary in 1858, presiding
as ASSOCIATE JUSTICE of the California Supreme Court until 1862
As an author, Baldwin is famous for The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi (1853) and Party Leaders (1855) He died September
30, 1864, in San Francisco, California
vBALDWIN, ROGER NASH Roger Nash Baldwin spent his life crusading for
CIVIL RIGHTS and liberties and was one of the principal founders of theAMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION(ACLU)
Baldwin was born January 21, 1884, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, into a comfortably well-to-do Boston Brahmin family His ances-tral roots reached back to what he once referred
to as “the inescapable Mayflower.” His father, Frank Fenno Baldwin, was a conservative businessman His mother, Lucy Cushing Nash, instilled in her children a love of art, literature, and music Baldwin’s parents raised their six children with all the privileges and advantages their wealth could provide, but they also emphasized service to others The family attended the Unitarian Church, where an emphasis on helping others sowed in Baldwin the seeds of a social work career
Baldwin was an unconventional boy who was not interested in competitive endeavors and shared his mother’s interest in literature and art
He was a nonconformist who was influenced by Henry David Thoreau’s philosophy of individu-alism and self-reliance Although his parents were conservative, the young Baldwin was introduced to many progressive leaders at the home of his uncle and aunt, William Baldwin and Ruth Standish Bowles Baldwin His uncle was president of the Long Island Railroad, director of the National Child Labor Commit-tee, and aTRUSTEEof Tuskegee Institute He also worked to end prostitution, His aunt supported the fledgling labor movement and was a founder of theNATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, a trustee
of Smith College, and a member of theSOCIALIST PARTY The couple often entertained the social reformers of the day, and Baldwin was influ-enced by his exposure to their somewhat radical ideas
Baldwin was educated at Harvard, earning both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree there In 1906 he left the East and headed for
St Louis to be a social worker He directed a social settlement house for poor people and taught the first sociology courses offered at Washington University, in St Louis He became the chief probation officer of the St Louis Juvenile Court in 1908 While in that position,
he and Bernard Flexner coauthored the first textbook on the juvenile courts Their book, Juvenile Courts and Probation, set out profes-sional standards for juvenile practice and was the standard text in the field until the 1960s In
1910 Baldwin became the secretary of the St Louis Civic League, an urban reform agency supporting civic causes
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1961–73 Vietnam War
1981 Awarded Medal of Freedom; died, Oakland, N.J.
1940 All communist members
of ACLU board removed
1939–45 World War II
1950 Retired
as director of ACLU
1925 ACLU joined defense team of Scopes
"Monkey" trial
1920 Helped organize and became first director of ACLU
1917 Organized American Union Against Militarism
1914–18 World War I
1914 Juvenile Courts and
Probation published
1904 Graduated from Harvard University
1908 Became chief probation officer of the
St Louis Juvenile Court
1884 Born,
Wellesley, Mass.
1900
486 BALDWIN, ROGER NASH
Trang 10While working in St Louis, Baldwin met and
became friends with the anarchistEMMA GOLDMAN
His first defense of free speech came in 1912
when he spoke in support ofMARGARET SANGER, an
early crusader forBIRTH CONTROL and
reproduc-tive rights, whose lecture was shut down by the
police Through the social work profession he
was attracted to the reform movement and the
labor movement He organized the Division on
Industrial and Economic Problems at the 1916
meeting of the National Conference of Social
Work, and wrote a report calling for cooperative
production and distribution systems to replace
competitive labor systems
In 1917, when the United States entered
WORLD WAR I, Baldwin organized the American
Union against Militarism (AUAM), which was
later replaced by the National Civil Liberties
Bureau (NCLB) In its early days, the AUAM
was concerned with defending those who
refused to be drafted to serve in the war
Baldwin was among the conscientious objectors
opposed to the draft, and he was sentenced to a
year in jail for his refusal to register In a speech
to the court before he was sentenced, he
explained that his reason for opposing the draft
was his “uncompromising opposition to the
principle ofCONSCRIPTIONof life by the state for
any purpose whatever, in time of war or peace.”
After his release from prison, Baldwin
worked as a common laborer around the
Midwest and joined the radical International
Workers of the World (IWW) union He
returned to New York in 1920 to help reorganize
and reconstitute the NCLB with two conservative
lawyers, Albert DeSilver and Walter Nelles, who
shared his passion for championing the rights of
the oppressed Baldwin agreed to head the new
organization, named the American Civil Liberties
Union, and carry out its unique mission to
impartially defend the civil liberties of all U.S
citizens, regardless of their affiliation or activities
Baldwin was launched in what would be a long
and vigorous struggle to create“a society with a
minimum of compulsion, a maximum of
individual freedom and of voluntary association,
and the abolition of exploitation and poverty.”
Perhaps it was inevitable that Baldwin would
become associated with leftist causes, because the
people most in need of free speech protection
during the 1920s and 1930s were often political
liberals and radicals He once told an interviewer
that during this time he was heavily influenced
by the Marxist theory that “the real center in
society was the organized underdog in the trade unions,” which he believed was true although only part of the whole picture
Baldwin came to realize that the civil liberties
of right-wing groups were just as likely to be infringed as those of left-wingers Bewildered and frustrated by liberal groups who opposed the ACLU’s support of free speech rights for the American Nazi party or the KU KLUX KLAN, Baldwin said, “[T]hese people can be just as great tyrants as the other side helping them get freedom didn’t help the cause of freedom.”
Referring to the wide variety of causes the ACLU defended over the years, Baldwin said,“I always felt from the beginning that you had to defend people you disliked and feared as well as those you admired.” Although not a member of any party, he supported the causes of Communists, Socialists, and other leftist organizations during the 1920s and 1930s However, in 1940, when he began to realize that the Communist label was being used by totalitarian governments, he wrote
a resolution that resulted in the removal of all the Communist members of the ACLU board
Ironically, Baldwin’s resolution became the model for government loyalty oaths, which the ACLU later attacked in court
Although he was a card-carrying Wobbly, as members of the IWW were called, Baldwin could not be categorized as liberal or conserva-tive He was active in the National Audubon Society, the American Political Science Associa-tion, and a number of other organizations on both ends of the political spectrum The only label Baldwin accepted for himself was that of reformer: “I am dead certain that human progress depends on those heretics, rebels and dreamers who have been my kin in spirit and whose ‘holy discontent’ has challenged estab-lished authority and created the expanding visions mankind may yet realize.”
During the years of Baldwin’s leadership, the ACLU, using volunteer lawyers, was involved in a wide variety of civil liberties cases, especially involving free speech and assembly One con-cerned a 1925 Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools The ACLU defended a science teacher, John Thomas Scopes, charged with violating the law (Scopes v
State, 152 Tenn 424, 278 S.W 57 [1925]; 154 Tenn 105, 289 S.W 363[1927]).WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, a three-time presidential candidate and well-known fundamentalist, helped the state attorney general PROSECUTE the case, and the
[OUR GOAL IS]A SOCIETY WITH A MINIMUM OF COMPULSION,A MAXIMUM OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AND OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION,AND THE ABOLITION OF EXPLOITATION AND POVERTY
—R OGER N ASH
B ALDWIN