Supreme Court by President Washington 1805 Senate acquitted Chase by one vote 1776 Signed the Declaration of Independence 1775–83 American Revolution 1777 Elected to serve in Md.. Genera
Trang 1Chase was born April 17, 1741, in Somerset County, Maryland His father, Thomas Chase, was a British-born clergyman of the Church of England His mother, Matilda Walker Chase, died at Chase’s birth In 1744 the family moved
to Baltimore where Chase grew up and received
a classical education under his father’s supervi-sion Chase studied law in Annapolis, Maryland,
at the office of Attorney John Hall from 1759 until he was admitted to the bar in 1763 In
1762 Chase married Ann Baldwin They had seven children, three of them dying in infancy
Ann died sometime between 1776 and 1779 and
in 1784 Chase married Hannah Kitty Giles, with whom he had two daughters
Chase established a successful law practice
in Annapolis, the colonial capital and later the state capital of Maryland He also became prominent in colonial politics In 1764 he was elected to the lower house of Maryland’s colonial legislature as a representative of Annapolis and by the early 1770s he had become well-known as a skillful legislator and outstanding leader, earning the nickname the Maryland Demosthenes after the ancient Greek orator and politician He represented Maryland
in the Continental Congresses from 1774 to
1778 and 1784 to 1785 and in 1778 served on as many as 30 committees in his tireless efforts
to advance the cause of independence from Britain He advocated aBOYCOTTof Britain and a political confederation of the colonies He denounced those who opposed such policies
as “despicable tools of power, emerged from obscurity and basking in proprietary sunshine.”
Together with BENJAMIN FRANKLIN and Charles Carroll, Chase traveled in 1776 to Montreal in
an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Canada to
join the American colonies in their revolt against England He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and worked for its acceptance in Maryland
Chase helped draft the Maryland Constitu-tion in 1776 He served in the Maryland House
of Delegates for all but a year and a half between
1777 and 1788 When the U.S Constitution came before the Maryland Convention for
RATIFICATION Chase was in the minority of delegates who voted against it He was an ardent Anti-Federalist at the time and argued that the Constitution concentrated power in the hands of the central government at the expense of the common individual “I consider the Constitu-tion,” he wrote to a friend, “as radically defective
in this essential: the bulk of the people can have nothing to say to it The government is not a government of the people.” He also argued that the Constitution failed to protect theFREEDOM OF THE PRESSand the right to trial by jury
His opposition to the Constitution cost him his state legislative seat in 1788 The same year, Chase also went bankrupt after several of his speculative business ventures failed These business risks had also damaged his political career, which had been plagued with charges that he used his office for personal gain In 1778
he had been dismissed from the Continental Congress for two years for allegedly attempting
to corner the flour market and profit from speculation on prices
Dogged by BANKRUPTCY and charges of corruption, Chase sought refuge in the position
of a local judge in Baltimore County in 1788 In
1791 he was concurrently appointed chief judge
of the Maryland General Court The state
1741 Born, Somerset County, Md.
1764 Elected to Md.'s colonial legislature
1811 Died, Baltimore, Md.
1763 Established law practice in Annapolis
1788 Lost reelection to House of Delegates;
appointed to Baltimore County judgeship
1774–78 Represented Md in the first Continental Congress
◆
◆
1796 Nominated to U.S Supreme Court by President Washington
1805 Senate acquitted Chase by one vote
1776 Signed the Declaration
of Independence
1775–83 American Revolution
1777 Elected to serve in Md House
of Delegates
1791 Appointed judge of Md General Court; served concurrently with Baltimore judgeship
1800 Thomas Jefferson elected president
1804 U.S House voted to impeach Chase
◆◆
Trang 2assembly, upset with his behavior on the bench
and his holding two positions as judge, tried
unsuccessfully to remove him from both
positions
Chase might seem to have been an unlikely
choice for a Supreme Court justice However,
PresidentGEORGE WASHINGTONnominated him to
the Supreme Court on January 26, 1796 Over
the years Washington had been impressed by
Chase’s legal skills; he also admired the zeal with
which Chase had worked for American
inde-pendence during the Revolutionary War as well
as Chase’s efforts in support of Washington in
the Continental Congress James McHenry of
Maryland, the secretary of war and a friend of
Washington’s, strongly recommended Chase to
Washington Moreover, the Supreme Court was
not very powerful or prestigious at the time and
it was difficult to find a lawyer who would
accept a position on it The job did not pay well
and justices had to travel long distances to
preside over circuit courts
Chase took his seat on the Court on
February 4, 1796 He was an Anti-Federalist at
the time of the Constitution’s ratification but
during his tenure on the Court he became a
persuasive advocate for the federal judiciary’s
power to review legislation Two cases from
Chase’s first session on the Supreme Court—
Hylton v United States, 3 U.S (Dall.) 171, 1 L
Ed 556, and Ware v Hylton, 3 U.S (Dall.) 199,
1 L Ed 568, both decided in March 1796—
stand out In Hylton v United States, the Court
for the first time reviewed a law passed by
Congress Although the Court refrained from
declaring its ability to void acts of Congress on
constitutional grounds, its review nevertheless
paved the way for MARBURY V MADISON, 5 U.S
(1 Cranch) 137, 2 L Ed 60 (1803), which
established the right of the Court to declare laws
unconstitutional At issue in Ware v Hylton was
whether a treaty decided by the federal
govern-ment could take precedence over state laws The
U.S government had made a treaty with Great
Britain following the Revolutionary War that
provided for the payment of debts owed to
Great Britain The states, meanwhile, had
passed their own laws on this issue, many of
which enabled U.S citizens to forgo repaying
their debts to British citizens JOHN MARSHALL,
future chief justice of the Court, argued the case
before the Court for the debtors The Court
ruled that the national treaty had precedent over
state law Of Chase’s opinion in this case,
constitutional scholarEDWARD S.CORWINwrote in
1930 that it “remains to this day the most impressive assertion of the supremacy of national treaties over State laws.”
In Calder v Bull, 3 U.S (Dall.) 386, 1 L Ed
648 (1798), Chase wrote a highly influential opinion for the Court He defined a constitu-tional interpretation of ex post facto laws—that
is, retroactive laws, or laws that affect matters occurring before their enactment Chase
decid-ed that the Constitution’s PROHIBITION of such laws extended only to criminal statutes that make prior conduct a crime, not to civil statutes Chase also set a precedent by arguing that any law“contrary to the great first principles
of the social compact” must be declared void In his opinion, Chase emphasized that the Consti-tution limits the ability of legislators to disturb established property rights even when it does not expressly set forth such rights Described by Presser as the natural-law basis of the Constitu-tion, this argument broadened the Court’s ability to test the constitutionality of legislation
In United States v Callender, Chase’s Trial 65, Whart St Tr 668, 25 F Cas 239, No 14, 709 (C.C Va.) (1800), Chase further defined the powers of the Court when he ruled that a jury could not decide the constitutionality of a law:
[T]he judicial power of the United States
is the only proper and competent authority
to decide whether any statute made by congress (or any of the state legislatures) is contrary to, or in violation of, the federal constitution… I believe that it has been the general and prevailing opinion in all the Union, that the power now wished to be exercised by a jury, belongs properly to the Federal Courts
Chase also found himself embroiled in highly publicized political controversy for his actions both on and off the bench For example,
he made partisan speeches in 1796 for JOHN ADAMS, the Federalist party candidate for presi-dent, even after he had taken the position of Supreme Court justice He also pushed for passage of the Alien andSEDITIONAct, 1 Stat 596 (1798), which outlawed “false, scandalous, and malicious” attacks on the government, the president, or Congress The law was designed largely to discourage criticism of President Adams by the rival DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN
THOMAS JEFFERSON InCIRCUIT COURT decisions in
1799 and 1800 Chase imposed harsh sentences
CHASE, SAMUEL 339
Trang 3The Samuel Chase Impeachment Trial
O
B
riginally an anti-Federalist opposed to the
ratification of the U.S Constitution on grounds
that it deprived the states of their independence
and sovereignty, Supreme Court Justice Samuel
Chase changed his tune about the propriety of a
strong central government once he saw the
anarchy and madness wrought by the French
Revolution By the time he was seated on the
nation’s high court, Chase had earned a reputation
for his zealous defense of the Federalist Party and
his harsh criticism of the Republican Party
Generally speaking, the Federalist Party favored
a strong national government, promoted legislation
that advanced mercantile interests, supported the
creation of a national bank, and believed that the
federal government should be run by the most
well-educated and affluent Americans The Republican
Party generally favored stronger and more
indepen-dent state governments, promoted legislation that
advanced agricultural interests, opposed the
crea-tion of a nacrea-tional bank, and believed that the federal
government should be run as a popular democracy,
with its power being directly and closely derived
from everyday, average Americans
Chase’s political beliefs endeared him to the
White House while Federalist John Adams was in
office But in 1800 Republican Thomas Jefferson
defeated Adams to become the third president of the
United States, and his Republican Party took control
of both houses of Congress Chase had rankled
Republicans even before Jefferson took office The
beginning of the fall term of the Supreme Court in
1800 had to be postponed several weeks until Chase
finished campaigning for John Adams in Maryland
After Jefferson took office, Chase began openly
assailing the president and his policies Chase even
took to condemning the Republicans from the
bench In reading a charge to a Baltimore grand
jury in May 1803, Chase unleashed what one
contemporary observer called “a tirade against
Republican legislation.” Dismayed that
Jefferso-nians in Maryland had established universal male
suffrage, Chase suggested to the grand jurors that
“the country … [was] headed down the road to
mobocracy, the worst of all popular governments”
and that, if left in power, Jeffersonian Republicans
would eliminate “all security for property, and
personal liberty.” The “modern doctrine … that all men in a state of society are entitled to equal liberty and equal rights,” Chase warned, will bring “mighty mischief upon us.” Finally, Chase said that congres-sional Republicans had gravely compromised the independence of the judiciary by repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801, which lame-duck Federalist lawmakers had passed to create extra federal judgeships for President Adams to fill
When Jefferson learned of Chase’s grand jury charge on May 13, 1803, he immediately wrote Joseph Nicholson, one of his party leaders in the House of Representatives, suggesting action against Chase: “Ought this seditious and official act on the principles of our Constitution, and on the proceedings
of a State, to go unpunished? And to whom so pointedly as yourself will the public look for the necessary measures? I ask these questions for your consideration, for myself it is better that I should not interfere.” Nicholson quietly alerted his Republicans colleagues as to Jefferson’s suggestion Less than a year later, on March 12, 1804, the U.S House of Representative voted to impeach Chase by a 73 to 32 margin, naming John Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson and a mercurial politician in his own right, to head the House Managers responsible for prosecuting Chase
in his trial before the Senate
The eight articles of impeachment centered on three charges The first charge arose from Chase’s remarks before the Baltimore grand jury The second charge stemmed from his conduct in the
1800 treason trial of John Fries The third charge focused on Chase’s conduct in the 1800 sedition trial of James Callendar Together, the House managers argued, these three charges represented judicial misconduct amounting to impeachable high Crimes and Misdemeanors Article II, Section 4 of the U.S Constitution provides that the federal judges
“shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
The least serious of the charges concerned Chase’s conduct in the Fries trial Fries was accused of treason for leading a riot over a dwelling tax in Pennsylvania in 1799 At the outset
of the Fries trial, Chase had delivered a written opinion in which he defined the meaning of treason
Trang 4as a matter of law, without ever hearing argument
from the lawyers in the case Fries’ attorneys were
flabbergasted They withdrew from the case
because, they contended, Chase’s conduct had
irrevocably tainted the jury pool and made a fair trial
impossible Without counsel, Fries was easily
convicted In defense of his actions, Chase told
the Senate that before the jury began deliberating in
the Fries case, he had instructed the jurors that they
had the final word on the definition of treason and
the final say on how that definition would be applied
to the facts of the case
The most serious charge concerned Chase’s
conduct at the Callender trial Callender had been
indicted under the provisions of the Sedition Act for
publishing a book accusing John Adams of being a
British toady and a monarchist Passed in 1798 by a
Federalist Congress, the Sedition Act made it a crime
to speak or write in such a way as to bring the
president or Congress “into contempt or disrepute.”
Jeffersonians viewed the act as a political tool that the
Adams administration used to muzzle its opponents
During the impeachment trial, the House
Managers presented evidence that Chase had
prejudged the Callendar case They offered
testi-mony that Chase, upon first reading Callendar’s
book, had expressed the intent to present the
offending passages to a grand jury himself and
obtain an indictment against the defendant Chase
admitted threatening such action but denied
following through on the threat and argued that
the threat by itself did not constitute a high crime or
misdemeanor The House Managers also presented
evidence that Chase failed to exclude a juror from
sitting on the jury, even though the juror had formed
an unfavorable opinion about Callendar Chase
admitted that one juror indicated having formed
such an opinion, but Chase said that the same juror
also said he had not formed an opinion about the
specific charges against the defendant
The trial began on February 9, 1805, and the House
Managers took ten full days to present the testimony
of more than 50 witnesses Chase did not testify during
the proceedings but instead read a prepared
statement that attempted to refute the charges
Closing arguments started on February 20 and lasted
several days Martin Luther, one the country’s most
able and respected lawyers, represented Chase
Seven House Managers, led by Randolph, spoke for
the prosecution Thirty-Four senators weighed the
evidence, 25 Republicans and 9 Federalists Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s vice president, presided over the proceedings Twenty-two votes, or two-thirds of the Senate, were necessary for conviction
On March 1, 1805, the Senate announced its verdicts Chase was acquitted on all counts The closest vote was 19–15 in favor of convicting Chase for his anti-Republican remarks to the Baltimore grand jury Contemporary observers and historians have given Martin Luther a lion’s share of the credit for the acquittals His closing argument deeply impressed the Senate with ideas that Chase was a wronged man and that the integrity and indepen-dence of the federal judiciary would be imperiled by conviction John Randolph’s closing argument, by contrast, was described as so ineffective, disorga-nized, shrill, and blatantly partisan that even Thomas Jefferson was alienated
The failure of the Senate to convict allowed Chase to return to the Supreme Court and serve six more years as an associate justice More impor-tantly, the acquittal deterred the House of Repre-sentatives from using impeachment as a partisan political tool Some historians have suggested that the Chase impeachment trial was just a test case for House Republicans who would have pursued other impeachments more aggressively
The Chase impeachment is also said to have left
a lasting impression on Chase’s friend, Chief Justice John Marshall, who spent much of his later career attempting to demonstrate that the nation’s high court was separate from and even above party politics In the final analysis, these two results represent flip sides of the same coin: one result increased the independence of the federal judiciary from interference by the legislative and executive branches, while the other result revealed the danger to that independence created by unelected federal judges who publicly attack the popular policies of democratically elected lawmakers
FURTHER READINGS Presser, Stephen B 1991 The Original Misunderstanding: The English, the Americans, and the Dialectic of Federalist Jurisprudence Durham, NC: Carolina Academic.
Rehnquist, William H 1992 Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson Durham, NC: Carolina Academic.
CROSS REFERENCE High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
B
CHASE, SAMUEL 341
Trang 5on Democratic-Republicans who had published opinions critical of Adams’s Federalist adminis-tration In several cases Chase worked to keep Anti-Federalists off juries In the case of John Fries of Pennsylvania, a strong supporter of Jefferson who had led rebellions against federal excise taxes, Chase sentenced the accused to death President Adams subsequently set aside the sentence
In 1800 the political atmosphere in Washing-ton, D.C., changed when Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency of the United States
In 1803 Chase got into trouble with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans when he severely criticized their policies in front of a Baltimore GRAND JURY Chase explained that he objected to recent changes in Maryland law that gave more men the privilege of voting Such changes as these advanced by Democratic-Republicans, Chase exclaimed, would
rapidly destroy all protection to property, and all security to personal liberty, and our Republican Constitution [would] sink into mobocracy, the worst of all possible govern-ments… The modern doctrines by our late reformers, that all men in a state of society are entitled to enjoy equal liberty and equal rights, have brought this mighty MISCHIEF
upon us, and I fear that it will rapidly destroy progress, until peace and order, freedom and property shall be destroyed
This angered Jefferson and other Democrat-ic-Republicans and in 1804 the U.S House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase on charges of misconduct and bias in the sedition cases and of seditious criticism of Jefferson in the 1803 Baltimore grand jury charge In 1805 the Democratic-Republican–controlled U.S
Senate moved to impeach Chase Democratic-Republican senators charged that Chase had been guilty of judicial misconduct and that his partisan acts showed that he lacked political objectivity Federalists defending Chase argued that he had committed no crime and that he could not be convicted under the constitutional definition ofHIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS The Senate failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to impeach Chase and he remained
on the Court until his death
Chase’s acquittal set an important precedent for the Court—no Supreme Court justice could
be removed simply because of his or her political beliefs The failure to impeach Chase allowed Chief Justice Marshall to assert and
define the powers of the Court in future decisions with more confidence It was thus a step in the process of defining the independence
of the Supreme Court as one of the three primary branches of U.S government
Chase avoided controversy in his subse-quent work on the Court His near impeach-ment served as a warning both to him and to other justices to be careful in their choice of words while in office As Chase suffered in later years from declining health, Marshall became the most vocal justice and assumed Chase’s position as the lightning rod for the Court Chase died June 19, 1811, in Baltimore He was interred in St Paul’s Cemetery
FURTHER READINGS
United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions, Volumes I–V Leon Friedman, and Fred L Israel, eds New York: Chelsea House.
Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995, 2d ed Claire Cushman Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.
of Independence Available online at http://www.
home page: http://www.ushistory.org (accessed August
29, 2009).
CROSS REFERENCES
Anti-Federalists” (In Focus); Fries’s Rebellion.
CHATTEL
An item of personal property that is movable; it may be animate or inanimate
Chattels are synonymous with goods or
PERSONALTY
CHATTEL MORTGAGE
A transfer of some legal or equitable right in personal property as security for the payment of money or performance of some other act Chattel mortgages have generally been superseded by other types of secured transactions under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a body of law adopted
by the states that governs commercial transactions The rights of the lender who gives a chattel mortgage are valid only against others who know or should know of the lender’s security interest in the property Because the borrower possesses the property, others cannot realize that a chattel MORTGAGE exists without notice
Trang 6Chattel Mortgage
This document is to be used as a guideline only HowStuffWorks does not guarantee that this document is suitable, or
legally accurate, for all situations, and is not liable for any deficiencies in the document's content.
Lender Information:
State:
Zip:
1 Promise to Pay For value received, _ (Borrower) promises to
pay _ (Lender) $ _ and interest at the yearly rate of % on the
unpaid balance as specified below.
2 Installments
Borrower will pay payments of $ each at monthly/yearly/ _ intervals on the _
day of the month.
Borrower will pay one lump payment on _ date.
Borrower will pay payments of $ each at monthly/yearly/ intervals with a final
balloon payment of _ at the end of the loan term on _ date.
3 Application of Payments Payments will be applied first to interest and then to principal.
4 Prepayment Borrower may prepay all or any part of the principal without penalty.
5 Loan Acceleration If Borrower is more than _ days late in making any payment, Lender may declare that the entire
balance of unpaid principal is due immediately, together with the interest that has accrued.
6 Security.
This is an unsecured note.
Borrower agrees that until the principal and interest owed under this promissory note are paid in full, this note will be
secured by a security agreement and Uniform Commercial Code Financing statement giving Lender a security interest in the
equipment, fixtures, inventory and accounts receivable of the business known as _.
Borrower agrees that until the principal and interest owed under this promissory note are paid in full, this note will be
secured by the
mortgage
deed of trust covering the real estate commonly known as
and more fully described as follows: _
7 Collection Costs If Lender prevails in a lawsuit to collect on this note, Borrower will pay Lender's costs and lawyer's fees in an
amount the court finds to be reasonable.
[continued]
A sample chattel mortgage.
CHATTEL MORTGAGE 343
Trang 7Each state, therefore, has developed a system for recording instruments showing the existence of chattel mortgages for particular items of property; these records are usually located in the county clerk’s office
If a recording system is in existence a buyer
is presumed to know about a mortgage Once, therefore, the mortgage is properly recorded, the buyer obtains the debt in addition to the property
CROSS REFERENCE Recording of Land Titles.
CHATTEL PAPER
A writing or writings that evidence both a monetary obligation and a security interest in or
a lease of specific goods In many instances chattel paper will consist of a negotiable instrument coupled with a security agreement When a transaction is evidenced both by such a security agreement or a lease and by an instrument or a series of instruments, the group of writings taken together constitutes chattel paper
CROSS REFERENCE Secured Transactions.
vCHÁVEZ, CÉSAR ESTRADA César Estrada Chávez, the son of Mexican American farm workers, became a well-known
labor leader, founding the United Farm Work-ers (UFW) union, which led a massive grape
BOYCOTT across the United States during the 1960s Chávez won wage increases, benefits, and legal protections for migrant farm workers in the western United States and fought to have dangerous pesticides outlawed
Chávez was born March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, one of five children in a family that lived on a small farm for a time When he was a child, the family was pushed onto the road as migrant laborers when Chávez’s parents lost the family farm during the Great Depression Later,
he often spoke of what he felt was the unjust way in which his family had lost their property through foreclosure Chávez never went beyond the eighth grade, and he once said that he had attended over 60 elementary schools because of his family’s constant search for work in the fields
Chávez was exposed to labor organizing as a young boy, when his father and uncle joined a dried-fruit industry union during the late 1930s The young Chávez was deeply impressed when the workers later went on strike At age 19, Chávez himself picketed cotton fields but watched the union fail in its efforts to organize the workers
After serving in the U.S Navy duringWORLD WAR II, he returned to California, where he married a woman named Helen Fabela In 1952
A sample chattel
mortgage
(continued).
ILLUSTRATION BY GGS
CREATIVE RESOURCES.
REPRODUCED BY
PERMISSION OF GALE,
A PART OF CENGAGE
LEARNING.
Chattel Mortgage
The undersigned and all other parties to this note, whether as endorsers, guarantors or sureties, agree to remain fully bound until this note shall be fully paid and waive demand, presentment and protest and all notices hereto and further agree to remain bound notwithstanding any extension, modification, waiver, or other indulgence or discharge or release of any obligor hereunder or exchange, substitution, or release of any collateral granted as security for this note No modification or indulgence by any holder hereof shall be binding unless in writing; and any indulgence on any one occasion shall not be an indulgence for any other or future occasion Any modification or change in terms, hereunder granted by any holder hereof, shall be valid and binding upon each of the undersigned, notwithstanding the acknowledgement of any of the undersigned, and each of the undersigned does hereby irrevocably grant to each
of the others a power of attorney to enter into any such modification on their behalf The rights of any holder hereof shall be cumulative and not necessarily successive This note shall take effect as a sealed instrument and shall be construed, governed and enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of _.
Witnessed: _ Date:
Witnessed: _ Date:
Witnessed: _ Date:
Witnessed: _ Date:
Trang 8the Los Angeles headquarters of organizer Saul
Alinsky’s COMMUNITY SERVICE Organization
(CSO) decided to set up a chapter in San Jose,
California, to work forCIVIL RIGHTSfor the area’s
Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants
A parish priest supplied several names to CSO
organizer Fred Ross, including that of Chávez,
who was then living in one of San Jose’s poorest
and toughest neighborhoods—Sal Si Puedes
(leave, if you can) Ross believed that Chávez
could be the best grassroots leader he had ever
encountered, so he sought Chávez out and
eventually convinced him to join the group’s
efforts Chávez began as a volunteer in a CSO
voter registration drive and a few months later
was hired as a staff member He spent the next
ten years leading voter registration drives
throughout the San Joaquin Valley and
advo-cating for Mexican immigrants who complained
of mistreatment by police officers, IMMIGRATION
authorities, and welfare officials
Chávez believed that unionizing was the
only chance for farm workers to improve their
working conditions He resigned in 1962,
increasingly frustrated because the CSO would
not become involved in forming a farm
work-ers’ union He immediately established the
National Farm Workers Association, which
later became the UFW, an affiliate of the
American Federation of Labor and Congress
of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) At the
UFW’s first meeting in September 1962, in
Fresno, California, Chávez’s cousin, Manuel
Chávez, unveiled the flag that he and Chávez
had designed for the new union—a black Aztec
eagle in a white circle on a bold red background
The banner soon became the symbol of the
farm workers’ struggle
When Chávez founded the UFW, field workers in California averaged $1.50 per hour, received no benefits, and had no methods by which to challenge their employers Under Chávez’s leadership, the UFW won tremendous wage increases and extensive benefits for farm workers, including medical and unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation A strict believer in nonviolence, Chávez used marches, boycotts, strikes, fasts, andCIVIL DISOBEDIENCEto force growers in California’s agricultural valleys
to the bargaining table In 1968 Filipino grape pickers in Delano, California, struck for higher
César Chávez.
AP IMAGES
❖
1927 Born,
Yuma, Ariz.
1939–45 World War II
◆
1962 Organized the National Farm Workers Association
1970 UFW signed contracts for higher wages with grape growers
1958 Became director of the Community Service Organization
1950–53 Korean War
1975 California passed Agricultural Labor Relations Act
1993 Died, Yuma, Ariz.
1968 UFW boycott of California grapes began
1961-73 Vietnam War
1944–45 Served in U.S Navy during World War II
1966 United Farm Workers (UFW) formed
CHÁVEZ, CÉSAR ESTRADA 345
Trang 9wages; several days later, the UFW joined the strike and initiated a boycott of California grapes More than 200 union supporters traveled across the United States and into Canada, urging consumers not to buy California grapes The mayors of New York, Boston, Detroit, and St Louis announced that their cities would not buy nonunion grapes By August 1968, California grape growers estimated that the boycott had cost them about 20 percent of their expected revenue The boycott brought Chávez to the attention of national political leaders, including U.S SenatorROBERT F
KENNEDY, who sought the DEMOCRATIC PARTY
nomination for president before his ASSASSINA-TION in 1968 Kennedy described Chávez as a heroic figure In 1970, after its successful boycott, the UFW signed contracts with the grape growers
In 1975 Chávez had a great success when the strongest law ever enacted to protect farm workers, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (Cal Lab Code § 1140 et seq [West]), was passed by the California Legislature This law gave workers the right to bargain collectively and the right to seek redress for unfair labor practices Other regulations banned the use of tools that caused crippling back injuries, such as the short-handled hoe, and required growers to give workers breaks and to provide toilets and fresh water in the fields Chávez was among the first to link workers’ health problems to pesticides He negotiated union contracts that prohibited growers from using DDT, and he targeted five leading pesticides that cause birth defects or kill upon contact
At its peak during the 1970s the UFW had more than 70,000 members During the early 1980s, the UFW’s influence began to wane and union membership dipped below 10,000
Chávez blamed the decline in part on the election of Republican governors, who sided with the growers In addition, Chávez decided
to turn his efforts toward conducting boycotts rather than organizing workers, a move that was widely criticized and caused a split among the union’s members Chávez was also forced to defend himself against lawsuits stemming from UFW actions taken years before In 1991 the union lost a $2.4 million case when the U.S
Supreme Court declined to hear its appeal The case stemmed from a 1979 Imperial Valley strike in which a farm worker was shot and killed (Maggio, Inc v United Farm Workers of
America, 227 Cal App 3d 847, 278 Cal Rptr
250[Cal App 1991], cert denied, 502 U.S 863,
112 S Ct 187, 116 L Ed 2d 148[1991])
In April 1993 Chávez returned to San Luis,
a small town near his native Yuma, Arizona, to
TESTIFY in the retrial of a lawsuit brought by Bruce Church, Inc., a large Salinas, California– based producer of iceberg lettuce At the time Chávez testified, Bruce Church had extensive landholdings in Arizona and California, includ-ing the acreage east of Yuma that Chávez’s parents had once owned The company had won a $5.4 million judgment for alleged damage caused by union boycotts, but an appellate court overturned the judgment and sent the case back
to the trial court (Bruce Church, Inc v United Farm Workers of America, 816 P 2d 919 [Ariz App 1991]) On April 22 Chávez finished his second day of TESTIMONY in Yuma County Superior Court He returned to spend the night
at the home of a family friend and died in his sleep
Following Chávez’s death, Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, described the leader
as instrumental in organized labor’s efforts to improve the lot of the worker “Always, César had conveyed hope and determination, espe-cially to minority workers, in the daily struggle against injustice and hardship,” Kirkland said
“The improved lives of millions of farm workers and their families will endure as a testimonial to César and his life’s work.”
In a 1984 speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Chávez said,“Regardless
of what the future holds for our union, regardless of what the future holds for farm workers, our accomplishment cannot be un-done The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm.”
FURTHER READINGS Etulain, Richard W., ed 2002 Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography with Documents New York: Bedford/St.
Houle, Michelle, ed 2003 Cesar Chavez San Diego, Calif: Greenhaven.
Matthiessen, Peter 2000 Sal Si Puedes (Escape if You Can): Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution Los Angeles: Univ of California Press.
CROSS REFERENCES Agricultural Law; Labor Union.
OUR STRUGGLE IS
NOT EASY… BUT
WE HAVE SOMETHING
THE RICH DO NOT
OWN WE HAVE OUR
BODIES AND SPIRITS
AND THE JUSTICE OF
OUR CAUSE AS OUR
WEAPONS
—C ÉSAR C HÁVEZ
Trang 10A written order instructing a bank to pay upon its
presentation to the person designated in it, or to
the person possessing it, a certain sum of money
from the account of the person who draws it
A check must contain the phrase“pay to the
order of.” A check differs from a draft in that
a check is always drawn on a bank, whereas a
draft is an order for payment drawn on anyone,
including a bank, a person, or a trading account
with a company
A blank check is one that the drawer signs
but omits filling in the space for the name of the
payee, the person in whose favor a check is
drawn, or neglects to fill in the space for the
amount to be paid
A cashier’s check is one that the bank draws
on itself and is signed by an authorized bank
official The bank lends its credit to the
purchaser of the check in order to facilitate its
immediate use in commercial transactions It is
a direct obligation of the bank
A personal check is one that the individual
draws on his or her own account
A postdated check is one that bears a date
after its date of issuance, and is payable on the
stated date
A traveler’s check is one purchased from a
bank, express company, or other financial
institution in various denominations, and is
signed immediately by the purchaser in order to
establish the form of his or her signature The
check cannot be treated as cash because of this
first signature, but it is treated as cash upon the
purchaser’s second signature when he or she
uses it The genuineness of the second signature
is established by comparing it to the initial
signature A traveler’s check is similar to a
cashier’s check of the issuer
CHECKOFF
A system whereby an employer regularly deducts a
portion of an employee’s wages to pay union dues
or initiation fees
The checkoff system is very attractive to a
union because the collection of dues can be
costly and time-consuming It prescribes the
manner in which dues are paid by deductions in
earnings rather than through individual checks
sent directly to the union Unions are thereby
assured of the regular receipt of their dues
A dues checkoff system is only lawful when voluntarily authorized by an employee Unions have attempted to make alternatives to checkoff more onerous by requiring such practices as in-person delivery of dues checks to out-of-state locations The NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
has held that this type of inducement to checkoff is unlawful, however, as is the attempt
by a union to collect assessments extending beyond periodic dues
CROSS REFERENCES Labor Law; Labor Union.
CHEROKEE CASES With the creation of the U.S Constitution and a national government, political and legal policy-makers had to determine how to deal with Native American tribes that resided on lands granted to them by treaties By the 1820s, U.S
policy toward what was regarded as the“Indian problem” was one of forced removal and resettlement to lands to the west In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act (4 Stat
411) and appropriated $500,000 for that purpose, signaling a determination to affect great changes
The Cherokee, faced with growing hostility
to their presence in the state of Georgia, were the first group of Native Americans to press their legal rights all the way to the U.S Supreme Court The Court issued decisions in two cases that are commonly known as the Cherokee Cases: Cherokee Nation v Georgia, 30 U.S
(5 Pet.) 1, 8 L Ed 25 (1831), and Worcester v
Georgia, 31 U.S (6 Pet.) 515, 8 L Ed 483 (1832) These are landmark cases that have continued to shape judicial analysis of disputes between tribal governments and state and federal governments A key issue in both cases was the legal and political status of Native American tribes The Cherokee claimed they were an independent, sovereign state, akin to a nation such as France or Great Britain The Supreme Court rejected this claim in the first case but developed a different theory of
SOVEREIGNTYin the second decision
In Cherokee Nation, the Cherokee asked the Court for an INJUNCTION that would prevent Georgia from executing laws that the tribe contended were being used to drive them off their land and to“annihilate” their existence as
a political society Chief Justice JOHN MARSHALL,
CHEROKEE CASES 347