According to the state supreme court, the trial court judge repeatedly shut off the attorney when the attorney sought 488 SANCTION... Sanford was a native of Tennessee with a cosmopolita
Trang 1To assent, concur, confirm, approve, or ratify The part of a law that is designed to secure enforcement
by imposing a penalty for violation of the law or offering a reward for its observance A punitive act taken by one nation against another nation that has violated a treaty orINTERNATIONAL LAW Sanction is a broad term with different meanings in different contexts It can be used to describe tacit or explicit approval Used in this sense, the term usually is used in assigning liability to a party who was not actively involved
in wrongdoing but who did nothing to prevent
it For example, if the upper-level managers of a business knew that their employees were using unfair employment practices and did nothing to stop them, it may be said that the managers sanctioned the unfair practices
The term sanction also can describe dis-agreement and condemnation InCRIMINAL LAW,
a sanction is the punishment for a criminal offense The criminal sanction for a criminal
includes such measures as death,INCARCERATION,
fines
InCIVIL LAW, a sanction is that part of a law that assigns a penalty for violation of the law’s provisions The most common civil sanction is
a monetary fine, but other types of sanctions exist Depending on the case, a sanction may be the suspension or revocation of a business, professional, or hobby license, or a court order commanding a person to do or refrain from doing something A sanction may even be tailored to the case at hand For instance, under Rule 37 of the Federal Rules ofCIVIL PROCEDURE,
if a party refuses to obey a discovery order, or an order to relinquish requested evidence, the court may order that the evidence sought be automatically construed in favor of the request-ing party, refuse to allow the disobedient party
to make claims or defenses related to the evidence, stay or postpone the case until the discovery order is obeyed, dismiss the action or render judgment for the requesting party, declare the disobedient party in CONTEMPT of court, or make any other order that is just under the circumstances
In civil LITIGATION, sanctions are slightly different from remedies A remedy is the relief accorded to a victorious litigant The remedy may be money damages, an order that forbids
or commands the opposing party or parties to
do or refrain from doing a certain act or acts, or some other result favorable to the victorious litigant Remedies are not always intended to punish a person, while sanctions are always punitive Nevertheless, remedies and sanctions are similar in that they refer to a loss that a civil litigant must bear if she is found liable for a civil wrong
In some cases a party may have to remedy another party’s loss as well as suffer criminal and civil sanctions, all for the same act For example, if an attorney is professionally negli-gent in his handling of a client’s case and steals funds from the client’s trust account, the attorney may face aMALPRACTICE civil suit from the aggrieved client in which the client asks for money as a remedy for the malpractice The attorney also may suffer sanctions from the professional conduct committee of the state bar association and criminal sanctions from a prosecution for the theft
The contempt-of-court offense provides a flexible form of sanction Contempt-of-court sanctions may be either civil or criminal The court may order a party to pay a fine or suffer some setback in the case (civil contempt), or it may order that the party be placed in jail (criminal contempt) The basic difference between the two is that criminal contempt is
an act of disrespect toward the court, whereas civil contempt acts tend to be less offensive transgressions, such as the unintentional failure
to comply with discovery orders or to perform other acts ordered by the court
Most courts possess inherent authority to sanction attorneys or parties for misconduct that occurs during a legal proceeding However, judges must be careful to issue sanctions in an impartial manner Attorneys and parties who face judicial sanctions can ask the judge to
believe the judge is incapable of making a fair determination A denial of a motion to recuse is appealable, and APPELLATE courts will closely scrutinize the circumstances of the denial For example, the ArkansasSUPREME COURTruled that
a trial court judge should have recused himself before issuing sanctions against an attorney because the trial judge had an obvious bias toward the attorney According to the state supreme court, the trial court judge repeatedly shut off the attorney when the attorney sought
488 SANCTION
Trang 2answers to his questions, telling the attorney,
“I’m not up here to answer your questions.”
The trial judge also told the attorney that
“I can do anything I want to I’m the judge.”
Allen v Rutledge, 355 Ark 392, 139 S.W.3d 491
(2003);
One type of non-judicial form of sanction is
corporation Corporations must follow various
rules passed by federal, state, and local
admin-istrative agencies authorized by lawmaking
bodies to regulate specific topics of government
concern If a business does not obey agency
rules that apply to it, it may face sanctions levied
by the administrative agency responsible for
enforcing the rules For example, federal and
state environmental protection agencies are
authorized by statute to levy fines against
businesses that violate environmental laws and
regulations
An international sanction is a special form
of sanction taken by one country against
another International sanctions are measures
that are designed to bring a delinquent or
renegade state into compliance with expected
rules of conduct International sanctions may be
either non-forceful or military Military
sanc-tions can range from cutting off access to
limited strikes to full-scale war Non-forceful
international sanctions include diplomatic
mea-sures, such as the withdrawal of an ambassador,
the severing of diplomatic relations, or the filing
of a protest with the UNITED NATIONS; financial
sanctions such as denying aid or cutting off
access to financial institutions; and economic
sanctions such as partial or total trade
embar-goes The U.N Security Council has the
authority to impose economic and military
sanctions on nations that pose a threat to peace
FURTHER READINGS
“Limits of the Criminal Sanction.” 2002 New Jersey Law Journal (July 29).
Pate, William H 2002 “To Sanction or Not to Sanction: Why Arguing against the Court’s Precedent Is Not an Automatic Rule 11 Violation ” Campbell Law Review 25 (fall).
vSANFORD, EDWARD TERRY
An important influence on the development of civil liberties, Edward Terry Sanford served on the U.S Supreme Court from 1923 to 1930
Sanford was a native of Tennessee with a cosmopolitan education, and before serving on the Court, he had aPRIVATE LAWpractice, served
in the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, and was a federal district judge in his home state for 14 years
While on the Court, Sanford’s views were largely moderate, and in his lifetime he was over-shadowed by his highly visible contemporaries
Nonetheless, Sanford’s opinions on civil liberties helped advance the guarantees of the BILL OF
1920s, he laid the groundwork for modern Supreme Court decisions that restrict the power
of states to limit FIRST AMENDMENT rights to
FREEDOM OF SPEECH Sanford was born in Knoxville, Tennessee,
on July 23, 1865, the son of a lumber and construction millionaire He earned four degrees from the University of Tennessee and Harvard, and studied languages in France and Germany At Harvard Law School, he distin-guished himself as the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude
He began practicing law in Tennessee in the 1890s He then lectured in law at the University
of Tennessee from 1898 to 1906 before moving
to Washington, D.C., for his first federal job
Edward Terry Sanford 1865–1930
❖
1865 Born, Knoxville, Tenn.
1861–65 U.S Civil War
◆
1883 Earned B.A from University
of Tenn.
◆
1889 Earned M.A and LL.B.
from Harvard University
◆◆
1906 Appointed special assistant prosecutor to U.S.
attorney general
1907 Appointed assistant U.S attorney general
1914–18 World War I
1908–23 Served as associate justice of the U.S District Court in Tenn.
1939–45 World War II
1930 Died, Washington, D.C.
◆ ❖
1923–30 Served as associate justice of the U.S Supreme Court
1925 Wrote majority opinion in Gitlow v New York
1927 Wrote majority opinion in Fiske v Kansas
◆
ASSUME THAT THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND OF THE PRESS ARE AMONG THE FUNDAMENTAL PERSONAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES PROTECTED FROM IMPAIRMENT BY THE
—E DWARD T.
S ANFORD
Trang 3Sanford’s federal law career began in prosecution and rapidly took him to the federal bench He joined the Justice Department in
1906 as a special assistant prosecutor, and a year later he was made an assistant attorney general
By 1908, Sanford returned to Tennessee as a federal district judge, a position he held until
1923 His specialties were BANKRUPTCY and
reputation for open-mindedness, fairness, and leniency, at times reversing his own decisions
He was highly driven and nervously energetic, and would pace and chain-smoke in his chambers while considering his busy docket
In 1923 Sanford’s nomination to the Su-preme Court came at the behest of his friends, Chief JusticeWILLIAM HOWARD TAFTand Attorney General HARRY M DAUGHERTY The two men convinced President WARREN G HARDING of Sanford’s breadth of education and varied experience, which included service on theLEAGUE
the Senate, and Sanford sat on the Court for seven years until his death in 1930 He wrote
130 opinions, many of them addressing issues related to government, business, and especially bankruptcy
Although neglected by history because of the accomplishments of his celebrated contemporar-ies, Sanford made a major contribution in the
area of civil liberties In particular, he helped develop the so-called incorporation doctrine— the Supreme Court’s view that the Bill of Rights applies not only to the federal government but also, in large part, to the states During much
of the nineteenth century, states conferred fewer rights upon their citizens than those extended by the federal Bill of Rights, even after
the intervention of the Supreme Court, this began to change at the turn of the century In the mid-1920s Sanford helped effect the change
in two important cases concerning freedom
of speech
The first case dealt with a state’s power to control the press In GITLOW V NEW YORK, 268 U.S 652, 45 S Ct 625, 69 L Ed 1138 (1925), the Court considered New York’s conviction of
a leftist author under the state’sANARCHYlaw of
1902 The broader question for the Court was, Should the First Amendment be extended to the states? Sanford’s opinion upheld the conviction because, in the Court’s view, states should be free to prosecute citizens who advocate violent overthrow of government But on the broader question of the Bill of Rights, Sanford wrote in
states through the Fourteenth Amendment Gitlow planted the seed for the incorporation
of the First Amendment, and for subsequent cases in which the Court would strike down state laws that violated the First Amendment In
1927 the Court upheld a defense based on the doctrine enunciated in Gitlow in Fiske v Kansas,
274 U.S 380, 47 S Ct 655, 71 L Ed 1108 In his opinion, Sanford underscored that states must guarantee First Amendment rights Throughout his tenure on the Court, Sanford voted consistently with Chief Justice Taft Sanford died at age 64 on March 8, 1930— the same day that Taft died
FURTHER READINGS Friedman, Leon, and Fred L Israel, eds 1995 The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions New York: Chelsea House.
vSANGER, MARGARET HIGGINS
A feminist and founder of the Planned
Sanger battled the government and the Roman Catholic Church to establish the legitimacy of
BIRTH CONTROL
Edward T Sanford.
COLLECTION OF THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE
UNITED STATES
490 SANGER, MARGARET HIGGINS
Trang 4Sanger was born September 14, 1879, in
Corning, New York, to Michael Higgins, an
Irish stonecutter, and Annie Purcell Higgins, the
daughter of an Irish day laborer Sanger’s
mother, who had five more children and
suffered chronic tuberculosis, died at the age
of 50 in 1899 Sanger blamed her mother’s
death on the strain of bearing eleven children
Following her mother’s death, Sanger began
nursing training at White Plains Hospital She
often accompanied doctors to patients’ homes
to deliver babies, and she frequently had to
deliver children herself Many of the new
mothers asked Sanger what they could do to
prevent another pregnancy She, in turn, asked
the doctors, but they gave her no information
and took little interest in the women’s dilemma
While completing her nursing training,
Sanger met William Sanger, an architect, whom
she married in 1902 He was a German Jew and
a socialist who was active in the radical causes of
the day
By 1912 the Sangers and their three
children had moved to Greenwich Village,
where the couple became involved in politics
and the arts and entertained some of the most
radical intellectuals of the time Sanger became
deeply involved with the SOCIALIST PARTY While
recruiting for the organization, she visited many
working-class families with six and seven
children that were forced to make their home
in two- and three-room tenements She found
that the women lived in dread of having more
children and the resulting increase in poverty,
and she concluded that women needed the right
to control their own bodies
She soon began speaking publicly on the problems of family life, connecting the size of the family with the economic problems of the working class Her speeches became so popular that she was asked to turn them into a series of articles for the Call, a New York socialist newspaper In her 12-week series, entitled
“What Every Woman Should Know,” Sanger explained puberty, the reproductive organs, and sexually transmitted diseases After the paper printed an article about gonorrhea, the authori-ties threatened that if it published a planned article on syphilis, its mailing permit would be canceled under the Comstock Act of 1873, a
Margaret Higgins Sanger 1879–1966
❖
1879 Born,
Corning, N.Y.
1914–18 World War I
1939–45 World War II
❖
◆
1914 First issue of Woman Rebel published;
indicted under the Comstock Act for the mailing of obscene material
◆
1916 Opened first U.S birth control clinic; served 30 days in prison for distributing birth control information
◆
1918 Crane decision allowed doctors to
give out birth control information
◆
1923 Opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau
◆
1921 Formed the American Birth Control League
◆
1931 Testified before Congress concerning the Doctor's Bill
◆
1952 Helped found the International Planned Parenthood Federation
1942 Birth Control Federation of America renamed Planned Parenthood Federation of America
◆
1960 Birth control pills first marketed
1936 U.S Court of Appeals ruled in United States v One Package
that the Comstock Act did not apply to physicians' packages
1950–53 Korean War
1961–73 Vietnam War
1966 Received the Presidential Medal of Valor; died, Tucson, Ariz.
Margaret Sanger.
AP IMAGES
Trang 5strictCENSORSHIPlaw that barred the mailing of
“obscene” material The law was named for Anthony Comstock, a special agent of the post office with authority to open the mail and determine whether materials were obscene
Along with her speaking and writing, Sanger returned to nursing in New York and spent much
of her time assisting with home births and living with the families for several weeks afterward She observed that the women had repeated pregnan-cies and were obsessed with methods of prevent-ing conception They sought illegal and cheap
and tried dangerous cures of their own, such as drinking turpentine and inserting instruments into the uterus After one woman died following her second self-induced ABORTION, Sanger was distraught and walked the streets for hours before returning home That night, Sanger decided to devote her life to educating women about their bodies and methods of contraception
Sanger began her work by scouring libraries for information on preventing conception After months of reading and research, she was convinced that no practical information existed
in the United States, and she traveled to France with her family In Paris Sanger found that French women were well versed in contraceptive meth-ods She talked to druggists, midwives, doctors, and working women, and noted formulas for suppositories and douches, which she planned to write up as a pamphlet for U.S women
Returning home to New York, she began publishing a monthly magazine called the Woman Rebel She deliberately decided to use the publication to engage in a frank discussion of women’s liberation from the fear and reality of unplanned pregnancies, knowing that she would soon run afoul of Anthony Comstock Sanger realized that the new movement needed a name, and after much discussion, she and a group of supporters agreed to call it birth control
In April 1914, four weeks after the first issue
of the Woman Rebel was published, the post office notified Sanger that the magazine was unmailable under the Comstock Act While she skirmished with Comstock over her maga-zine, Sanger worked on her pamphlet on contraceptive techniques, called Family Limita-tion, in which she described the practical knowledge she had gathered in Europe Sanger visited 22 printers in one week, trying to find someone who would produce the pamphlet
Finally, 100,000 copies were printed, addressed, and stored in San Francisco, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, to be mailed on her prearranged signal, when she thought she would be safe from Comstock’s interference
In August 1914, Sanger was indicted on charges of violating the Comstock Act When it became clear that the judge hearing her case was biased against her, she fled to Europe to gain time
to prepare her case properly She sailed from Canada under a false name and without a passport From the ship, where she was safely outside U.S legal jurisdiction, Sanger sent telegrams containing the prearranged code word that indicated it was time to send out her pamphlet on contraception After landing in Liverpool, she traveled on to London, where news
of the Woman Rebel had made her a celebrity in radical circles She later moved to Holland, which had the lowest infant death rate in the world and where all mothers were taught about contracep-tion There, Sanger learned how to examine women and advise them on which of the 15 available birth control devices were appropriate
As a result of her experience in Europe, she learned the necessity of the medical community’s involvement in the birth control movement and the importance of keeping thorough records and conducting follow-up studies
In October 1915 Sanger sailed home She contacted the district attorney about her case, and a hearing was scheduled for the following January But in November 1915, the Sangers’ daughter, Peggy, died of pneumonia, and Sanger sank into a severe depression She insisted on going ahead with her trial, however, and received an outpouring of support from people across the country who had heard of her loss Eventually the charges were dismissed on the grounds that they were two years old and that Sanger had not made a practice of publishing obscene articles Although this dismissal prevented the Comstock Act from being challenged in the courts, the publicity surrounding Sanger’s case made the entire country aware of the birth control movement Sanger next notified her supporters of her intent to establish free clinics throughout the country, at which women could receive instruc-tion in birth control Sanger rented a storefront tenement in the Brownsville section of Brook-lyn, where many newly arrived immigrants lived The three women printed 5,000 circulars
BE BORN OF SLAVE
—M ARGARET S ANGER
492 SANGER, MARGARET HIGGINS
Trang 6in English, Yiddish, and Italian, advertising the
clinic and offering contraceptive information
for ten cents, and posted them around the
neighborhood The posters read,“Mothers! Can
you afford to have a large family? Do you want
any more children? If not, why do you have
them?”
In October 1916 Sanger, along with her
sister Ethel Byrne, who was a nurse, and Fania
Mindell, another supporter, opened the first
birth control clinic in the United States After
only nine days, more than 400 women had
come to the clinic for assistance Among them
was an undercover policewoman, who arrested
Sanger, Byrne, and Mindell and confiscated all
the patient records, pamphlets, and
contra-ceptives The women were charged with
dis-seminating birth control information and
maintaining a public NUISANCE Byrne was found
guilty and sentenced to 30 days in jail, where she
nearly died from a hunger strike before the
governor pardoned her Mindell was found
guilty of selling copies of “What Every Woman
Should Know” and fined 50 dollars Sanger was
convicted and sentenced to thirty days in the
workhouse, where she gave lectures on birth
control to the other inmates and taught them to
read and write
After her release, Sanger decided to focus on
changing the laws on contraception and
edu-cating women about birth control techniques
Her conviction for running the birth control
clinic had been upheld by the New York
Supreme Court in People v Sanger, 179 App
Div 939, 166 N.Y.S 1107 (1917), and she
appealed to the state’s high court, the New York
Court of Appeals In January 1918, in an
opinion that became known as the Crane
decision after the authoring judge, Frederick
Crane, the appellate court upheld the lower
court (Sanger, 222 N.Y 192, 118 N.E 637) But
the court interpreted the criminal laws broadly,
holding that doctors could give out birth
control information to any married person to
protect his or her health This meant that clinics
could operate freely and that they would be
under the supervision of medical personnel,
where Sanger thought they belonged
By 1920 more than 25 birth control
leagues were operating, and Mindell’s
convic-tion for distributing literature about
contra-ception was reversed, which meant that
pamphlets and books could more easily be
distributed In 1921 Sanger formed the Ameri-can Birth Control League The Catholic Church came to lead the opposition to Sanger’s efforts, and she continued to battle the church throughout her life
Sanger attacked the Comstock law, estab-lishing the National Committee for Federal Legislation for Birth Control, headquartered in Washington, D.C., to gather support for federal legislation dubbed the Doctor’s Bill By 1931 hundreds of medical, political, religious, and labor organizations supported the bill When Sanger appeared before a subcommittee of the Senate Judicial Committee in February 1931, she testified that based on statistics for the period since the Comstock Act took effect in
1873, one-and-a-half million women had died during pregnancy and childbirth; 700,000 illegal abortions had been performed each year; and fifteen million children had died during their first year because of poverty or their mother’s poor health But the proposed legislation was vehemently opposed by the Catholic Church, the Patriotic Society, the Purity League, and other groups, and was defeated
After further attempts to pass the legislation were unsuccessful, Sanger decided to turn to the courts In 1933, she had a new type of pessary (vaginal suppository) sent to Dr Hannah Stone,
in New York, but the package was seized under the Comstock Act Stone filed charges After a trial, the court ruled that the doctor was entitled
to the package (United States v One Package, 13
F Supp 334 [S.D.N.Y 1936]) The government appealed to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which upheld the lower court, ruling that the aim of the Comstock law was not
to“prevent the importation, sale, or carriage by mail of things which might intelligently be employed by conscientious and competent physicians for the purpose of saving life or promoting the well being of their patients” (One Package, 86 F.2d 737 [2d Cir 1936]) In 1937
position that all doctors should receive infor-mation about the legal dispensation of contra-ceptives and that new contraceptive techniques should be studied
In 1939 the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and the Birth Control League merged into the Birth Control Federation of America, which was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942 Sanger
Trang 7continued her work, initiating birth control programs in rural clinics Here, she decided that the relatively expensive and difficult-to-use diaphragm was impractical and that women needed a birth control pill or injection In the 1950s she supported the work of Dr Gregory Pincus, whose research eventually produced the birth control pill
In 1966, at the age of 82, Sanger received the Presidential Medal of Valor from LYNDON B
she died in Tucson, Arizona
FURTHER READINGS Chesler, Ellen 1992 Women of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Coigney, Virginia 1969 Margaret Sanger: Rebel with a Cause New York: Doubleday.
Reed, Miriam 2003 Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words.
Fort Lee, N.J.: Barricade Books.
Sanger, Margaret 2004 The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger Mineola, N.Y.: Dover.
Topalian, Elyse 1984 Margaret Sanger New York: Watts.
CROSS REFERENCES Griswold v Connecticut; Women’s Rights.
SANITY Reasonable understanding; sound mind; posses-sing mental faculties that are capable of distin-guishing right from wrong so as to bear legal responsibility for one’s actions
SANTA CLARA COUNTY V
SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY
An 1886 U.S Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S 394, 6 S Ct 1132, 30 L
Ed 118, has been interpreted that the term person as used in theEQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSEof
corpora-tions as well as to natural persons
The Southern Pacific Railroad Company refused to pay a tax assessed by the California Board of Equalization upon its franchise, road-ways, roadbeds, fences, and rolling stock The county brought an action in state court against the railroad to recover the delinquent taxes The railroad had the action removed to the federal district court The court agreed with the defendant that the assessment of the tax was void because the board had no jurisdiction to
act It also ruled that the defendant had been denied equal protection of the law because the assessment of the property was made at full monetary value without the discount that was given to individual property owners for out-standing mortgages on their property The county filed a writ of error to the federal court, and the U.S Supreme Court heard the case The Court agreed with the railroad that the state board had no jurisdiction to assess the tax The assessment of taxes by the board on fences belonging to the railroad was deemed void because the board was authorized by the state constitution to assess only“the franchise, road-way roadbed, rails, and rolling stock.” The Court rejected the argument that the fences constituted part of the roadway for purposes of taxation The constitution required a separate assessment for
“land, and improvements thereon” and a state statute expressly included the term fence within the categories of improvements The state board acting through the county sought to have the plaintiff liable for a single sum, incorporating taxes assessed upon various types of property, including property that the board had no power
to assess The Court declared that since part of the assessment was illegal, it could not support an action for the county to recover the entire tax; therefore, it affirmed the judgment for the defendants
The Court did not explicitly discuss the Fourteenth Amendment in its opinion, basing its decision on the invalidity of the assessment
In its statement of the facts of the case, it did, however, set out the Fourteenth Amendment claims of the railroad The California constitu-tion denied “railroads and other quasi public corporations” equal protection of laws as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution because the board did not reduce the value of property for assessment purposes by the amount of any outstanding mortgage debts on it, as it did for property owned by natural persons or other corpora-tions Although the Supreme Court did not specifically rule on the constitutionality of the treatment of the railroad by the state, the case of County of Santa Clara v Southern Pacific Railroad Company is interpreted to support the principle that both corporations and natural persons are entitled to equal protection of laws pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
494 SANITY