These laws include the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.. The Court consolidated these cases by deciding that
Trang 1civil rights, and, therefore, Congress was powerless to legislate on the social conduct of private individuals Following this decision, states began enacting SEGREGATION in various laws, the most notorious of which were collectively referred to as the JIM CROW LAWS It took more than 80 years before Congress would again attempt to legislate in this area
The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 indicated congressional recognition that the federal gov-ernment had to bring about an end to racial discrimination The Civil Rights Commission was established, and the laws guaranteed quali-fied voters the right to vote, regardless of their color From 1964 through 1968, Congress enacted extensive and far-reaching legislation affording blacks equal status under the law, ranging from full and free enjoyment of public accommodations and facilities to the prohibition
of racial discrimination in employment as well as transactions affecting housing in the United States These laws include the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act
of 1967
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 outlawed discrimination based on physical disability in employment and public buildings
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 granted to victims
of unlawful discrimination the right to seek money damages, jury trials, and back pay The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the make the 180-day STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS for filing an equal-pay lawsuit reset with each new discrimi-natory paycheck The act overturned a Supreme Court ruling that held the 180 days began running with the employee’s first paycheck that was effected by discrimination
CROSS REFERENCES Civil Rights; “Civil Rights Act of 1964” (Appendix, Primary Document); Ku Klux Klan Act; “Voting Rights Act of 1965”
(Appendix, Primary Document).
CIVIL RIGHTS CASES
A landmark decision, which was a consolidation
of several cases brought before the Supreme Court
of the United States in 1883 that declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (18 Stat 336) unconstitutional and ultimately led to the enactment of state laws, such as Jim Crow Laws, which codified what had previously been individual adherence to the practice of racial segregation The cases were
United States v Stanley, United States v Ryan, United States v Nichols, and United States v Singleton, 109 U.S 3, 3 S Ct 18, 27 L Ed 835 The CIVIL RIGHTSAct of 1875 was passed by Congress in the post-Civil War era in response
to the refusal of many whites to afford newly freed slaves equal treatment with whites under federal law The act mandated that owners of public facilities, such as inns, restaurants, rail-roads, and other carriers, not discriminate against blacks who sought access to, or service from, them on the basis of their race Anyone who violated the law was subject to criminal prosecution
Scores of prosecutions ensued and six cases reached the Supreme Court The fact patterns of the cases were comparable in that they all were predicated upon the failure of blacks to be treated the same as whites in various establish-ments such as restaurants, theaters, railroads, and even the New York City Grand Opera House
The Court consolidated these cases by deciding that the crucial issue in each was whether the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was constitutional, to which it answered “no.” In
an 8–1 decision, JusticeJOSEPH BRADLEYreasoned that neither the Thirteenth nor Fourteenth Amendments empowered Congress to safe-guard blacks against the actions of private individuals To decide otherwise would afford blacks a special status under the law that whites did not enjoy The Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition of SLAVERY had no application to discrimination in the area of public accommo-dations Neither did the EQUAL PROTECTION
Clause of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT apply to prohibit racialSEGREGATION, because it was as the result of conduct by private individuals, not state law or action, that blacks were suffering The only dissenting justice wasJOHN MARSHALL HARLAN, who criticized the majority opinion on a number of grounds, including that the exclusion
of blacks from state licensed facilities for no other reason than their race did bring into application both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and that Congress had the author-ity pursuant to theCOMMERCE CLAUSEto legislate in those cases involving railroads
The decision in the Civil Rights Cases severely restricted the power of the federal government to guarantee equal status under the law to blacks State officials in the South took
Trang 2advantage of the eclipsed role of Congress in the
prohibition of racial discrimination and
pro-ceeded to embody individual practices of racial
segregation into laws that legalized the
treat-ment of blacks as second-class citizens for
another seventy years
CROSS REFERENCES
Civil Rights; Civil Rights Acts; “Civil Rights Cases” (Appendix,
Primary Document).
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The civil rights movement has been called the
Second Reconstruction, in reference to the
Recon-struction imposed upon the South following the
Civil War During this period, the Fourteenth
Amendment (1868)—granting equal protection of
the laws—and Fifteenth Amendment (1870)—
giving the right to vote to all males regardless of
race—were ratified, and troops from the North
occupied the South from 1865 to 1877 to enforce
the abolition of slavery However, with the end of
Reconstruction in 1877, southern whites again
took control of the South, passing a variety of laws
that discriminated on the basis of race These were
called Jim Crow laws, or the Black Codes They
segregated whites and blacks in education, housing,
and the use of public and private facilities such as
restaurants, trains, and rest rooms; they also denied
blacks the right to vote, to move freely, and to
marry whites Myriad other prejudicial and
discriminatory practices were committed as well,
from routine denial of the right to a fair trial to
outright murder by lynching These laws and
practices were a reality of U.S life well into the
twentieth century
The civil rights movement was a struggle by
African Americans in the mid-1950s to late
1960s to achieve CIVIL RIGHTS equal to those of
whites, including equal opportunity in
employ-ment, housing, and education, as well as the
right to vote, the right of equal access to public
facilities, and the right to be free of racial
discrimination No social or political movement
of the twentieth century has had as profound an
effect on the legal and political institutions of the
United States This movement sought to restore
to African Americans the rights of citizenship
guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments, which had been eroded by
segregationist JIM CROW LAWS in the South It
fundamentally altered relations between the
federal government and the states, as the federal
government was forced many times to enforce its
laws and protect the rights of African American citizens The civil rights movement also spurred the reemergence of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, in its role as protector of individual liberties against majority power In addition, as the ReverendMARTIN LUTHER KINGJr, and other leaders of the movement predicted, the movement prompted gains not only for African Americans but also for women, persons with disabilities, and many others
Organized efforts by African Americans to gain their civil rights began well before the official civil rights movement got under way By
1909, blacks and whites together had formed the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), which became a leading organization in the cause of civil rights for African Americans From its beginning, the NAACP and its attorneys challenged many discriminatory laws in court, but it was not until after WORLD WAR IIthat a widespread movement for civil rights gathered force
The war itself contributed to the origins of the movement When African Americans who had fought for their country returned home, they more openly resisted being treated as second-class citizens The movement’s first major legal victory came in 1954, when the NAACP won BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA,
KANSAS, 347 U.S 483, 74 S Ct 686, 98 L Ed 873,
in which the Supreme Court struck down laws segregating white and black children into differ-ent public elemdiffer-entary schools With Brown, it became apparent that African Americans had important allies in the highest federal court and its chief justice,EARL WARREN
Another catalyzing event occurred on December 1, 1955, whenROSA PARKS, an African
In order to protect them from possible violence on the part
of desegregation opponents, African American students at Central High School
in Little Rock, Arkansas, are escorted from school
by members of the Army’s 101st Airborne division in September 1957.
AP IMAGES.
Trang 3American woman, was arrested after she refused to give up her seat to a white man on
a Montgomery, Alabama, bus The law required African Americans to sit in the back of city buses and to give up their seats to whites should the white section of the bus become full
The city’s black residents, long tired of the indignities of SEGREGATION, began a BOYCOTT of city buses They recruited King, a 27-year-old preacher, to head the Montgomery Improve-ment Association, the group that organized the boycott The African Americans of Mon-tgomery held out for nearly a year despite violence—including the bombing of King’s home—directed at them by angry whites This violence was repugnant to many whites and actually increased support for the civil rights movement among them The boycott finally achieved its goal on November 13, 1956, when the Supreme Court, in Gayle v Browder, 352 U.S 903, 77 S Ct 145, declared Montgomery’s bus segregation law unconstitutional By December 1956, the city was forced to desegre-gate its buses
Although African Americans had sporadi-cally demonstrated against segregation laws in previous decades, the MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
became a turning point for their protests It gained significant media attention for the civil rights cause, and it brought King to the fore as a
leader King would go on to head theSOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE(SCLC), which was formed in 1957, and to guide the civil rights movement itself The boycott also marked the end of reliance onLITIGATIONas the major tactic for gaining civil rights for African Americans From this point on the movement also engaged
in nonviolent direct action, a technique ofCIVIL DISOBEDIENCE that had been used before by pacifists, by labor movements, and byMOHANDAS
K GANDHI in the struggle to secure India’s freedom from Great Britain
Nonviolent methods had been used by African Americans since the 1940s, when the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—a group
of blacks and whites that formed in 1942 to lobby for equal civil rights for all—organized nonviolent direct action to protest racial discrimination King described his own view
of nonviolent protest in his 1958 book Stride toward Freedom This type of protest worked in part by seeking to create a sense of shame in the opponent
The nonviolence of the civil rights move-ment and the power of the federal governmove-ment over the states were tested as African Americans sought to make use of the rights that had been confirmed by the Supreme Court For example, segregationist whites, including the Alabama legislature, refused to recognize the rulings of
After the Supreme
Court outlawed
segregation in
interstate bus
terminals, the 1961
Freedom Rides were
undertaken to
challenge continuing
segregation policies in
the South The riders
were attacked at
many of the stops,
and are shown here
being protected by
police and National
Guard troops in
Montgomery,
Alabama.
AP IMAGES
Trang 4the federal judiciary regarding SCHOOL
DESEGRE-GATION Some whites formed citizens’ councils
to combat desegregation, and theKU KLUX KLAN
and other reactionary whites began a campaign
ofTERRORISM, including bombings and murders,
intended to intimidate African Americans into
giving up their cause
A significant state-federal confrontation
oc-curred in 1957 at Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central
High School, when angry mobs of whites
attacked nine black students attempting to enroll
for classes PresidentDWIGHT D.EISENHOWERhad to
send in troops to enforce the Supreme Court’s
decision in Brown, confirming the right of the
students to attend the school In 1962, whenJAMES
MEREDITH attempted to enroll at the University
of Mississippi, President JOHN F KENNEDY
also sent in federal military troops to uphold
desegregation
The SCLC, which under King’s leadership
had become one of the most important civil
rights organizations in the country, in turn
spawned another influential group, the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC,
popularly called Snick) In 1960 this group,
which was made up of both blacks and whites,
became a major player in the civil rights struggle
SNCC attracted youths who were often
dissatis-fied by what they saw as the unnecessarily
moderate goals and methods of the NAACP
and the SCLC SNCC members later led voting
registration and education efforts throughout
the South, often at great personal risk
Even-tually, the group planted the seed of factionalism
in the civil rights movement, as it became
increasingly radical and alienated from the
mainstream of the movement as represented
by King
SNCC played an influential role in another
form of nonviolent direct action employed
in the civil rights movement: sit-ins These
demonstrations often focused upon the
whites-only lunch counters across the South Armed
only with a strict code of conduct that forbade
them to strike back or curse their opponents,
demonstrators endured jeers, spitting, and blows
by angry whites One tactic associated with this
strategy was the jail-in—also called jail, no bail—
in which hundreds of people, many of them
underage youths, arrived in waves at segregated
lunch counters, were arrested for trespassing,
and proceeded to overcrowd local jails Jail-ins
bogged down local governments and drew
national attention to the cause In the North, activists responded by picketing businesses, including the Woolworth chain of stores that operated segregated lunch counters in the South The right to participate in sit-ins was upheld by the Supreme Court decisions Garner v
Louisiana, 368 U.S 157, 82 S Ct 248, 7 L Ed
2d 207 (1961), and Peterson v City of Greenville,
373 U.S 244, 83 S Ct 1119, 10 L Ed 2d 323 (1963)
The Freedom Rides were a type of nonvio-lent direct action designed to oppose segrega-tion in interstate buses and bus stasegrega-tions They were inspired in part by the 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton v Virginia, 364 U.S
459, 81 S Ct 182, 5 L Ed 2d 206, which outlawed racial segregation in bus terminals and other places of public accommodation related
to interstate transportation Organized by CORE in 1961, the Freedom Rides were undertaken by six whites and seven blacks who rode two interstate buses from Washing-ton, D.C., to New Orleans Along the way, the riders deliberately violated segregation policies
on the buses and in bus terminal rest rooms, waiting areas, and restaurants White mobs
Dr Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights movement leaders participate in the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
AP IMAGES
Trang 5savagely beat Freedom Riders of both races at different stops in the Deep South and in Alabama, one of the buses was firebombed
Although the 1961 Freedom Rides pro-ceeded no farther than Jackson, Mississippi, they achieved their larger goal of inducing the federal government to enforce its laws The administration of President Kennedy sent in U.S marshals to protect the riders during the last part of their journey An even clearer victory was achieved in September 1961 when the
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION abolished all segregated facilities in interstate transportation
On August 28, 1963, the civil rights move-ment reached a high point of public visibility when it held the March on Washington
Hundreds of thousands of people—an estimated
20 to 30 percent of them white—gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to urge Congress and the federal
government to support desegregation and voting rights During this occasion, King gave his famous“I Have a Dream” speech
The following summer, civil rights activists
in Mississippi organized another highly publi-cized event, Freedom Summer, a campaign to bring one thousand students, both white and black, into the South to teach and organize voter registration Many civil rights groups provided backing for this movement, including SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP
Throughout this period of nonviolent pro-test, the civil rights movement continued to suffer the effects of white violence.MEDGAR EVERS,
an NAACP leader who was organizing a black boycott in Jackson, was shot and killed outside his home in 1963 Three participants in Freedom Summer—James Chaney, an African American, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both whites—were killed in Mississippi in June
The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
O
B
n December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested
in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give
up her seat on a city bus to a white man News of
Parks’s arrest quickly spread through the African
American community Parks had worked as a
secretary for the local branch of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Because she was a well-respected and dignified
figure in the community, her arrest was finally enough
to persuade African Americans that they could no
longer tolerate racially discriminatory laws
After exchanging phone calls, a group of African
American women, the Women’s Political Council,
decided to call for a boycott of the city buses as a
response to this outrage This suggestion was greeted
with enthusiasm by local African American leaders,
including the influential black clergy
On December 5, members of the African
American community rallied at the Holt Street
Baptist Church in Montgomery and decided to carry
out the boycott Their resolve was inspired by the
words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr
“We are here this evening,” King declared to
the packed church, “to say to those who have
mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.” He went on to make a case for peace and nonviolence
Contrasting the methods of nonviolence that he envisioned for a civil rights movement, to the methods of violence used by the racist and terrorist
Ku Klux Klan, King declared,
in our protest there will be no cross burn-ings… We will be guided by the highest principles of law and order Our method will
be that of persuasion, not coercion We will only say to the people,“Let conscience be your guide” … [O]ur actions must be guided
by the deepest principles of our Christian faith Love must be our regulating ideal Once again we must hear the words of Jesus echoing across the centuries: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.”
With these words and these events, the long, difficult struggle of the civil rights movement began
Trang 6Million Man March
O
B
n Monday, October 16, 1995, hundreds of
thousands of African American men gathered
on the Mall in Washington, D.C., for the Million
Man March, a daylong rally promoting personal
responsibility and racial solidarity Organized by
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, the
march was one of the most well attended and
significant rallies in the history of the nation’s
capital With its mass of men stretching from the
Capitol steps to the Washington Monument, the
gathering marked a renewed commitment to
self-empowerment and betterment on the part of
African Americans
The Million Man March deliberately recalled the
1963 March on Washington, which many consider
the high point of the civil rights movement During
that earlier gathering, the Reverend Martin Luther
King, Jr., gave his famous“I Have a Dream” speech
Many speakers at the Million Man March invoked
King’s speech, noting with a combination of sorrow,
anger, and penitence that King’s dreams for a
racially united America had not yet been realized
Farrakhan gave the keynote address of the day
Flanked by members of his paramilitary group, the
Fruit of Islam, and speaking from behind a bullet-proof
shield, he announced at the beginning of his speech,
“We are gathered here to collect ourselves for a
responsibility that God is placing on our shoulders to
move this nation toward a more perfect union.” He
continued to orate for over two hours, frequently
bringing home the point that African Americans still
suffer disadvantages that European Americans did not
have.“There’s still two Americas,” he declared, “one
black, one white, separate and unequal.”
In another significant speech, the Reverend
Jesse Jackson expanded on the religiously inspired
tone of repentance that was so much a part of the
Million Man March Speaking for those in
atten-dance, the civil rights leader prayed for “God to
forgive us for our sins and the foolishness of our
ways.” Like many of the other speakers, he called
on African American men to take responsibility for
their families, to end violence and drug use in the
home and in their communities, and to make sure
their children are learning in school He had this to
say about the current problems facing African Americans:
We come here today because there is
a structural malfunction in America It was structured in the Constitution, and they referred to us as three-fifths of a human being, legally…
Why do we march? Because our babies die earlier… Why do we march? Because we’re less able to get a primary or second-ary education Why do we march? Because the media stereotypes us We are projected
as less intelligent than we are; less hard-working than we work; less universal than
we are; less patriotic than we are; and more violent than we are Why do we march?
We’re less able to borrow money… Why do
we march? Because we’re trapped with second-class schools and first-class jails
Other speakers at the march included the Reverend Joseph Lowery; Damu Smith, of Green-peace; poet Maya Angelou; and Rosa Parks, whose arrest inspired the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott
Away from the speakers’ podium, the men collected on the Mall made their own history on that day Coming from different classes, regions, and religions, they were a diverse group not beholden to any one leader Many men remarked
on the deep meaning the experience had for them,
on the fellowship and friendships they gained, and on their own commitment to renewal and repair
of both themselves and their communities
One of the most contentious issues of all regarding the march was the attendance figure
The National Park Service officially estimated attendance at 400,000, whereas event organizers pegged it at over 1.5 million In comparison, the 1963 March on Washington attracted 250,000 participants
The Million Man March drew an extremely large share of the nation’s television audience, as well as laudatory comments from many national leaders, including President Bill Clinton and former general Colin L Powell
Trang 71964 Events such as these murders outraged many in the nation and solidified popular support for the civil rights cause
Then Congress passed one of the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation ever proposed, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A § 2000a et seq.) This act made Congress an equal partner with the Supreme Court in establishing civil rights Title II of the act outlawed discrimination in all places of public accommodation, including restaurants and lunch counters, motels and hotels, gas stations, theaters, and sports arenas It also allowed the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE to bring suit
in order to achieve desegregation in public schools, relieving the NAACP of some of its civil rights litigation caseload The following year, Congress passed another important piece of legislation, the VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 (42 U.S.C.A § 1973 et seq.) This act outlawed the voting qualifications, including literacy tests, that whites had used to keep African Americans from voting It also gave the federal government oversight powers regarding changes in state voting laws These laws together with federal actions showed that the civil rights movement had the backing of the powers of the federal government and that no amount of resistance, however violent, by white southerners would impede the cause
By the mid-1960s, the nature of the civil rights movement began to change African Americans, who had been united in their support of activities such as the Montgomery bus boycott, began to diverge in their views over what political action should be taken to improve their situation Members of different groups within the movement increasingly expressed their dissatisfaction with other groups More radical groups, including the Black Muslims and black power proponents, voiced discontent with the limited goals of the civil rights movement and its advocacy of nonviolence
Many of the new African American radicals called for black separatism or nationalism—that
is, separation from white society rather than integration with it Not content merely to seek civil equality, they began to press for social and economic equality They also questioned the usefulness of nonviolence and no longer sought
to include whites in the movement SNCC, for example, became an all-black organization in
1966 The arguments of the African American
radicals were punctuated by urban riots such as those in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965
By the late 1960s, African Americans still suffered from many disadvantages, including poverty rates that were much higher than those among whites and physical health that was much worse Racially motivated violence per-sisted as well, as seen in the ASSASSINATION of King by a white man in 1968
Despite these problems, the civil rights movement had forever changed the face of U.S law and politics It had led to legislation that gave greater protection to the rights of minorities It had also greatly changed the role
of the judiciary in U.S government, as the Supreme Court had become more active in its defense of individual rights, often in response to litigation and demonstrations initiated by those
in the movement In this respect, the Court and the civil rights movement had great influence
on each other, with each reacting to and encouraging the efforts of the other Likewise, the federal government had, even if hesitatingly, enforced the rights of a persecuted minority
in the face of vigorous opposition from the southern states
FURTHER READINGS Blumberg, Rhoda L 1991 Civil Rights: The 1960s Freedom Struggle Farmington Hills, MI: Cengage Gale Chalmers, David 2003 Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Friedman, Leon, ed 1967 The Civil Rights Reader: Basic Documents of the Civil Rights Movement New York: Walker.
Gray, Fred D 2003 “Civil Rights—Past, Present and Future, Part II ” Alabama Lawyer 64, no 8 (January) Johnson, Frank Minis 2001 Defending Constitutional Rights Athens, GA: Univ of Georgia Press.
Levine, Ellen, ed 2000 Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories New York: Putnam Juvenile.
Liebman, James S., and Charles F Sabel 2003 “The Federal
No Child Left Behind Act and the Post-Desegregation Civil Rights Agenda North Carolina Law Review 81 (May) Available online at http://www2.law.columbia edu/sabel/No%20Child%20Left.doc; website home page: http://www2.law.columbia.edu (accessed July 13, 2009) McKissack, Fredrick L., Jr 2004 This Generation of Americans: A Story of the Civil Rights Movement Grand Rapids, MI: School Specialty Publications.
Rostron, Alan 1999 “Inside the ACLU: Activism and Anti-Communism in the Late 1960s ” New England Law Review 33, no 2 (winter).
Wilkinson, J Harvie III 1979 From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration, 1954–1978 New York: Oxford Univ Press.
Trang 8CROSS REFERENCES
Baker, Ella Josephine; Bates, Daisy Lee Gatson; Black Panther
Party; Carmichael, Stokely; Cleaver, LeRoy Eldridge; Davis,
Angela Yvonne; Douglass, Frederick; Du Bois, William
Edward Burghardt; Jackson, Jesse; Ku Klux Klan; Liuzzo,
Viola Fauver Gregg; Marshall, Thurgood; School
Desegrega-tion; Wallace, George Corley See also primary documents in
“From Segregation to Civil Rights” section of Appendix.
CIVIL SERVICE
The designation given to government employment
for which a person qualifies on the basis of merit
rather than political patronage or personal favor
Civil service employees, often called civil
servants or public employees, work in a variety
of fields such as teaching, sanitation, health
care, management, and administration for the
federal, state, or local government Legislatures
establish basic prerequisites for employment
such as compliance with minimal age and
educational requirements and residency laws
Employees enjoy job security, promotion and
educational opportunities, comprehensive
med-ical insurance coverage, and pension and other
benefits often not provided in comparable
positions in private employment
Most civil service positions are filled from
lists of applicants who are rated in descending
order of their passing scores on competitive civil
service examinations Such examinations are
written tests designed to measure objectively a
person’s aptitude to perform a job They are open
to the general public upon the completion and
filing of the necessary forms Promotional
competitive examinations screen eligible
employ-ees for job advancement Veterans of theARMED
SERVICESmay be given hiring preference, usually in
the form of extra points added to their
examina-tion scores, depending upon the nature and
duration of their service Applicants may also be
required to pass a medical examination and more
specialized tests that relate directly to the
per-formance of a designated job Once hired, an
employee may have to take anOATHto execute his
job inGOOD FAITHand in accordance with the law
Unlike workers in private employment, civil
service employees may be prohibited from
certain acts that would compromise their
position as servants of the government and the
general public For example, the federal HATCH
ACT (5 U.S.C.A § 7324 et seq [1887]) makes
participation by federal, state, and local civil
service employees in designated public electoral
and political activities unlawful
The U.S Civil Service Commission, created
by Congress in 1883 and reorganized under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C.A
§ 1101 et seq.) as theMERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD, established a MERIT SYSTEM for federal employment and governs various aspects of such employment, such as job classification, tenure, pay, training, employee relations, equal opportunity, pensions, and health and life insurance Most states have comparable bodies for the regulation of state and local civil service employment
CIVIL WAR Civil war exists when two or more opposing parties within a country resort to arms to settle a conflict or when a substantial portion of the population takes up arms against the legitimate government of a country WithinINTERNATIONAL LAW distinctions are drawn between minor conflicts like riots, where order is restored promptly, and full-scale insurrections finding opposing parties in political as well as military control over different areas When an internal conflict reaches sufficient proportions that the interests of other countries are affected, outside states may recognize a state of insurgency A recognition of insurgency, whether formal orDE FACTO, indicates that the recognizing state regards the insurgents as proper contestants for legitimate power Although the precise status of insurgents under international law is not well-defined, recognized insurgents traditionally gain the protection afforded soldiers under international
Islamist insurgents face off against Somali government officials in Mogadishu
in August 2009 Civil war has plagued Somalia and its surrounding areas for more than 18 years.
ª STR/REUTERS/CORBIS
Trang 9rules of law pertaining to war A state may also decide to recognize the contending group as a belligerent, a status that invokes more well-defined rights and responsibilities Once recognized as a belligerent party, that party obtains the rights of a belligerent party in a public war, or war between opposing states The belligerents stand on a par with the parent state in the conduct and settlement
of the conflict In addition, states recognizing the insurgents as belligerents must assume the duties
ofNEUTRALITYtoward the conflict
CROSS REFERENCES U.S Civil War; War.
CIVIL WAR AMENDMENTS See FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT; FOURTEENTH AMEND-MENT;THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT
vCIVILETTI, BENJAMIN RICHARD Benjamin Richard Civiletti served as U.S
attorney general from 1979 to 1981 under President JIMMY CARTER His leadership helped theJUSTICE DEPARTMENTregain public credibility
in the years following theWATERGATEscandal
Civiletti was born July 17, 1935, in Peekskill, New York He received a bachelor of arts degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1957 and a law degree from the University of Maryland in
1961 He served from 1961 to 1962 as clerk to William Calvin Chesnut, a U.S district judge for Maryland From 1962 to 1964, he worked as assistant U.S attorney in Baltimore
Civiletti then turned to private practice with the prestigious Baltimore law firm of Venable, Baetjer, and Howard His skill as a trial attorney enabled him to rise quickly in the firm He became a partner in 1969 and headed the
LITIGATION department two years later He also became highly active on various professional committees in Baltimore and Maryland, includ-ing the Character Committee of the Court of Appeals of Maryland (1970–76), the Mayor’s Commission to Investigate Baltimore City Jails (1972–73), the Judiciary Committee of the BAR ASSOCIATION of Baltimore (1972–75), and the Maryland state legislature’s Task Force on Crime (1975–76)
Civiletti’s reputation as an outstanding lawyer and civic leader attracted the notice of officials
in President Carter’s administration In 1977, the Carter administration appointed Civiletti
assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department
He oversaw a number of sensitive cases in the Criminal Division, including the investigation of Bert Lance, a friend of Carter’s who resigned as director of theOFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
in September 1977 after being questioned by the Senate about alleged violations of banking laws Civiletti also dealt with a scandal involving alleged attempts by South Korean government officials
to buy influence from members of Congress and from other U.S government officials
In late 1977, the Carter administration nominated Civiletti as deputy attorney general
He was finally appointed to the post in January
1978 As deputy attorney general, Civiletti received widespread praise for his coordination
of an interagency campaign againstWHITE-COLLAR CRIME
Civiletti’s rapid rise through the ranks of the Justice Department culminated in his appoint-ment, in 1979, as U.S attorney general His appointment came after President Carter requested the resignation of top cabinet officials
in an attempt to improve the functioning of his administration The previous attorney general,
GRIFFIN B BELL, had strongly recommended Civiletti to be his replacement The Senate approved Civiletti’s appointment on August 1,
1979, by a vote of 94–1
As attorney general, Civiletti continued policies initiated by Bell: a restructuring of the
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONso that it might better investigate white-collar crime; recodifica-tion ofCRIMINAL LAWstatutes; increased pursuit of antitrust cases; and improvement of the IMMI-GRATIONand Naturalization Service In addition, Civiletti continued his earlier work to improve cooperation between different law enforcement divisions of the federal government
Civiletti was also forced to respond to international events during his tenure as attor-ney general After U.S citizens were seized at the U.S Embassy in Tehran in 1979, Civiletti directed the Justice Department’s efforts to deport Iranians who had entered the United States illegally Civiletti also traveled to the
INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE at The Hague, and persuaded its judges to rule in favor of the United States and denounce the Iranian capture
of the U.S embassy
After RONALD REAGAN took office as presi-dent in 1981, Civiletti returned to private practice at the Venable law firm He founded
LAW REQUIRES BOTH
A HEART AND A HEAD
—B ENJAMIN C IVILETTI
Trang 10the Maryland LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION and
was the original director of the National
Institute against Prejudice and Violence In
1992 Civiletti became the director and vice
president of the American JUDICATURE Society,
and in 1993 he was named chairman of the
Maryland Governor’s Commission on Welfare
Policy Civiletti has served as a trustee of Johns
Hopkins University and has received honorary
doctorates of law from the University of
Baltimore, Tulane University, Saint John’s
University, the University of Notre Dame,
and the University of Maryland
In 1999 Civiletti testified before a House
Judiciary Subcommittee in opposition to the
reauthorization of theINDEPENDENT COUNSEL Act
The act authorized a three-judge panel to
appoint a special PROSECUTOR to investigate
alleged illegal actions by government officials
It drew criticism for granting these prosecutors
too much power without any effective oversight
from the executive or judicial branches of
government In August 2001, Civiletti was sworn
in as the second member of the Independent
Review Board, a quasi-governmental agency that
was created by court order to monitor the
activities of the Teamsters Union
As of 2009, Civiletti continues his work in
private practice where he focuses on litigation
and antitrust issues as well as white
collar-crime, corporate governance, government
regu-lation, and health law He is a senior partner at
Venable LLP in Maryland He is chair of
the Maryland Commission on CAPITAL
PUNISH-MENT and continues to recommend abolishing
the death penalty Civiletti sits on numerous
boards, committees, councils, and task forces and maintains a steady schedule of speaking engagements
FURTHER READINGS Baker, Nancy V 1992 Conflicting Loyalties: Law and Politics
in the Attorney General’s Office, 1789–1990 Lawrence:
Univ Press of Kansas.
“Profiles in Power: The 1994 Power List: An Overview of the Outstanding Members of the Legal Profession ” 1994.
National Law Journal (April 4).
Venable, Baetjer, and Howard Venable “Civiletti, Benjamin R.”
Baltimore: West ’s Legal Directory, WESTLAW.
Benjamin Richard Civiletti 1935–
◆
1935 Born,
Peekskill, N.Y.
1939–45 World War II
1950–53 Korean War
1961–73 Vietnam War
2008 Appointed chair of Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment
◆
◆
1961 Clerked for U.S district judge William Chesnut
1964 Joined law firm of Venable, Baetjer and Howard
1962–64 Served as assistant U.S attorney in Baltimore
1977 Appointed assistant attorney general; headed Justice Department’s Criminal Division
1982–86 Served as chair of Maryland Legal Services Corporation
2001 Sworn in
as member of Independent Review Board
1979 Appointed U.S attorney general
1981 Returned to private practice with Venable
1992 Became director and vice president of the American Judicature Society
◆
◆
1995 Appointed by SEC to review dealings of Bankers Trust New York Corp.
Benjamin Civiletti.
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