Sunflower County to integrate local school system 1968–71 Served on Democratic National Committee ◆ ◆ 1968 Mississippi Loyalist Democratic Party MLDP won right to represent Mississippi
Trang 1for his capture by the U.S government and
$1 million by the Serbian government
The tribunal expects to try Karadzic in early
2012 and believes it will complete its final trials and appellate work sometime in 2013
FURTHER READINGS International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), www.icty.org (accessed September 23, 2009).
“The Lesson of Slobodan Milosevic’s Trial and Tribulation.”
2003 Economist 366.
Wald, Patricia M 2002 “Punishment of War Crimes by International Tribunals ” Social Research 69.
CROSS REFERENCES Arbitration; International Court of Justice; International Law; Jurisdiction.
vHAMER, FANNIE LOU TOWNSEND
FANNIE LOU HAMER worked for voter registration for African Americans in the U.S South and helped establish the Mississippi Freedom
DEMOCRATIC PARTY (MFDP), which successfully challenged the all-white Democratic party in Mississippi
Hamer was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi She was the twentieth and youngest child of Jim Townsend and Lou Ella Townsend, who were share-croppers in rural Mississippi Hamer grew up
in a tar paper shack and slept on a cotton sack stuffed with dry grass She first went into the cotton fields to work when she was six years old, picking thirty pounds of cotton a week By the time she was 13 years old, Hamer was picking 200 to 300 pounds of cotton each week
Because of her family’s poverty, she was forced
to end her formal education after the sixth grade
In 1944, when she was 27, Hamer married Perry (“Pap”) Hamer, a sharecropper on a nearby plantation owned by the Marlowe family, near Ruleville, Mississippi Hamer spent the next 18 years working in the fields chopping cotton Her husband also ran a small saloon, and they made liquor to sell
In August 1962 Hamer attended a meeting sponsored by the SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE(SCLC) and theSTUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC, pronounced Snick) The SCLC was founded in 1957 by a group of black ministers led byMARTIN LUTHER KING,
JR., and coordinated theCIVIL RIGHTSactiv-ities of ministers SNCC was organized in 1960 by students and other young people, and SNCC workers had recently come to Ruleville to organize voter registration drives At that time only five percent of African Americans in Mississippi who were old enough to vote had been allowed to register Ten days later a group of white men rode through the town and fired 16 shots into the homes of those involved in the black voting drive That night Hamer fled to her niece’s house 40 miles away A few weeks later, SNCC workers brought her to the SNCC annual conference in Nashville She later returned to the Marlowe plantation, where she found that her husband had been fired from his job and her family had lost its car, furniture, and house
Hamer then became a field secretary for SNCC in Ruleville, earning $10 per week, and
Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer 1917–1977
❖
1917 Born,
Montgomery
County, Miss.
1914–18
World War I
1950–53 Korean War
◆
1962 Attempted to register to vote in Indianola, Miss.; joined SNCC as field secretary
◆
1963 Passed literacy test for Miss voter registration; arrested and beaten in jail for violating segregation laws in Winona, Miss.
◆
1964 Helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
◆
1961–73 Vietnam War
❖
1977 Died, Ruleville, Miss.
1970 NAACP filed and won Hamer v
Sunflower County to integrate local school
system
1968–71 Served on Democratic National Committee
◆
◆
1968 Mississippi Loyalist Democratic Party (MLDP) won right to represent Mississippi at Democratic National Convention
1965 Joined the Selma march; ran for Congress in
SNCC-sponsored counterelection
◆
1965 Voting Rights Act passed
188 HAMER, FANNIE LOU TOWNSEND
Trang 2began organizing a poverty program She
worked with the local people, educating them
about their right to vote, and she became an
effective fund-raiser for SNCC, traveling to
northern towns to speak about life as an African
American in Mississippi, and participating in
civil rights demonstrations across the country
Hamer and her associates were often harassed,
intimidated, and even beaten
Hamer helped found the Council of
Feder-ated Organizations, which brought large
num-bers of white northerners into Mississippi in the
summer of 1964, known as Freedom Summer
These volunteers helped with voter registration
and other civil rights activities, and their work
focused national attention on the SEGREGATION
still rampant in the South
In April 1964, Hamer helped found the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic party The
MFDP was organized as an alternative to the
all-white Mississippi Democratic party, which
barred African Americans from its activities
The MFDP planned to challenge the regular
Democratic party’s right to represent
Missis-sippi at the Democratic National Convention in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, in August 1964 and
hoped to win the right to be seated as the state’s
legal delegation Before leaving for Atlantic City,
the MFDP held its own convention and elected
64 African Americans and four whites as
delegates to the national convention Hamer
was elected vice chairwoman
Democratic president LYNDON B JOHNSON,
who was running for reelection in 1964, became
worried that the MFDP would disrupt party
unity and cause him to lose the election to
Republican senatorBARRY M.GOLDWATER Johnson
went to work to stop the MFDP by having his
supporters threaten and harass MFDP
suppor-ters on the Credentials Committee, which was
scheduled to hear the MFDP’s case at the
convention In nationally televised proceedings
before the committee, Hamer testified about the
difficult life of African Americans in Mississippi
and how they were prevented from participating
in the political process She also described a
brutal beating she received while in jail for
violating segregation laws The beating left
Hamer nearly blind in one eye
Following Hamer’s testimony, viewers from
across the United States telegrammed their
delegates, urging them to support the MFDP
Realizing he would now have to deal with the
NEW PARTY, Johnson worked out a settlement that called for the seating of two at-large delegates from the MFDP and a pledge that segregated delegations would not be seated at the 1968 convention Hamer spoke out strongly against the compromise, and the delegation voted to reject it
Following the 1964 convention, Hamer continued her work in the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVE-MENT In March 1965 she joined King and hundreds of others in a 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama
She also traveled with a SNCC delegation to Africa
Back in Ruleville, Hamer and two other women ran for Congress against white con-gressmen in a special counterelection organized
by SNCC In the Democratic primary, their names were not on the ballot because the Mississippi election commission said they did not have enough signatures of registered voters
on their petitions, and the white candidates won In the SNCC election, however, the women’s names were listed on the ballot, and they won The women pressed their claim to be seated in Congress in Washington, D.C They argued that Mississippi county registrars had
Fannie Lou Hamer.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Trang 3refused to certify the signatures of black voters
on their petitions In September 1965, after nine months of investigation into their claim that the state had illegally obstructed their attempts to place their names on the ballot, the U.S House
of Representatives rejected their challenge by a margin of eighty-five votes
In August 1968, Hamer again traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as
a member of the alternative Mississippi delega-tion, renamed the Mississippi Loyalist Demo-cratic party (MLDP) Again, the party went before the Credentials Committee seeking rec-ognition, and again, a compromise was offered, this time to seat 21 members of each delegation
The MLDP refused to compromise, and this time, the regular delegation was unseated When Hamer finally took her seat at the convention, she received a standing ovation
Hamer went on to serve on the Democratic National Committee from 1968 until 1971 She also continued her civil rights work in Mis-sissippi In May 1970 Hamer and officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Indianola filed a
CLASS ACTION lawsuit in federal district court, claiming that the Sunflower County, Missis-sippi, school districts maintained a dual school system for black and white students and that black teachers and principals were not ade-quately protected against losing their jobs The suit asked the court to order that one integrated school system be established and maintained In Hamer v Sunflower County (N.D Miss., June
15, 1970), the district court, relying heavily on data in a report from a biracial committee headed by Hamer, ordered the county to merge its schools into one public school system The U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court in United States v
Sunflower County School District, 430 F.2d 839 (5th Cir 1970)
Hamer continued to work for the poor in Ruleville, organizing poverty programs, raising money for low-income housing, and starting a day care center Her favorite project was the Freedom Farm Cooperative She started the farm with 40 acres, which eventually increased
to 650 acres on which 5,000 people grew their own food
In 1976 Hamer was honored in Ruleville on Fannie Lou Hamer Day She died March 14,
1977, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes Engraved on the
headstone of her grave in Ruleville are the words “I am Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired.”
FURTHER READINGS Lee, Chana Kai 1999 For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer Urbana: Univ of Illinois Press.
Mills, Kay 2007 This Little Light of Mine Lexington, KY: Univ Press of Kentucky.
Rubel, David 1990 Fannie Lou Hamer: From Sharecropping
to Politics Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett CROSS REFERENCES
Civil Rights Movement; Voting.
vHAMILTON, ALEXANDER Alexander Hamilton, as a lawyer, politician, and statesman, left an enduring impression on U.S government His birth was humble, his death tragic His professional life was spent forming basic political and economic institutions for a stronger nation As a New York delegate at the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton
advocat-ed certain powers for the central government His principles led to his rise as chief spokesper-son for the FEDERALIST PARTY The party had a short life span, but Hamilton’s beliefs carried on through his famous FEDERALIST PAPERS In these documents he advocated broad constitutional powers for the federal government, including national defense and finance According to Hamilton, a lesser degree of individual human liberties and CIVIL RIGHTS would follow federal powers His deemphasis of freedom put him at odds with other Founders, especially Thomas Jefferson’s Democrats However, he backed his beliefs with a strong record of public service from the Revolution onward Through his contributions in the U.S Army, in theTREASURY DEPARTMENT, and as a lawyer, many still recog-nize him as a commanding architect of the United States government
Hamilton was born January 11, 1757, on Nevis Island, in the West Indies His parents never married His father, the son of a minor Scottish noble, drifted to the West Indies early
in his life and worked odd jobs throughout the Caribbean His mother died in the Indies when
he was 11 Hamilton spent his early years in poverty, traveling to different islands with his father At the age of 14, while visiting the island of St Croix, he met a New York trader who recognized his natural intelligence and feisty spirit The trader made it possible for
IF THIS IS AGREAT
SOCIETY, I’D HATE TO
SEE A BAD ONE
—F ANNIE L OU H AMER
190 HAMILTON, ALEXANDER
Trang 4Hamilton to go to New York in pursuit of an
education
Hamilton attended a preparatory school in
New Jersey and developed contacts with men
who had created a movement seeking colonial
independence When he later entered King’s
College (now Columbia University), he became
active in the local patriot movement The
American Revolution had been brewing in the
background, and Hamilton took a keen interest
in the battles that flared between the colonists
and the British around Boston in 1775 Instead
of graduating from college, he opted to join a
volunteerMILITIA company
He reported for orders to General George
Washington’s chief of artillery, Colonel Henry
Knox In his duties, Hamilton assisted in the
famous crossing of the ice-jammed Delaware
River on Christmas Night, 1776 Knox called
Hamilton to Washington’s attention In March
1777, Hamilton was appointed aide to the
commander in chief With Washington,
Hamil-ton learned his first lessons on the need for
central administration in dealing with crises
He also took advantage of his contacts with
General Philip Schuyler, a wealthy and
influen-tial man within the military In March 1780,
Schuyler’s young daughter, Elizabeth Schuyler,
agreed to marry Hamilton The relationship
provided Hamilton with both additional
con-tacts inside U.S politics and generous financial
gifts from his father-in-law
Hamilton came to resent the limits of his
position as aide to Washington and aspired to
greater challenges A minor reprimand afforded
him the opportunity to resign from his services
in April 1781 Hamilton had already received an
education beyond anything that King’s or any
other college could have offered However, he went to New York with his wife and took up the study of law in early 1782 In July of that year,
he was admitted to the bar
As a lawyer and as an intellectual who commanded growing respect, Hamilton repre-sented New York in theCONTINENTAL CONGRESSof
1782, in Philadelphia Here, he spoke with an ally, a young Virginian,JAMES MADISON The two expounded on the merits of strong central administration Most of the other delegates represented the common fears of citizens in the United States—apprehensions about the abu-sive tendencies of strong central powers and, more important, the possibility of oppression in
◆
Alexander Hamilton 1757–1804
❖
❖
1757 Born, Nevis Island
in the West Indies
◆
◆
1769 Moved from St Croix
to New York
◆
1775 Joined volunteer miltia
◆
1776 Declaration of Independence established United States of America
1776 Hamilton crossed the Delaware with Washington
1775–83 American Revolution
◆
1782 Admitted
to N.Y bar;
represented New York in Continental Congress of 1782
◆
1789–95 Served
as first secretary
of the U.S.
Treasury
1787 Represented New York in 1787 Constitutional Convention
◆
1798–1800 Rejoined army during French-American War;
served as inspector general
1804 Mortally wounded in gun dual with political rival Aaron Burr; died, New York City
1800 Cast deciding vote that gave Jefferson the presidency
◆
1777 Appointed aide to General Washington
Alexander Hamilton.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Trang 5the future Hamilton and Madison failed to sway a majority of the delegates to vote for their ideas In the end, the Congress adopted the
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, a body of principles intended to knit the new states into a union that was only loosely defined
Hamilton left Philadelphia frustrated He returned to New York, built a thriving law practice, and gained fame as a legal theorist In
1787 he spent a term in the New York Legislature and joined the movement designed
to create a new Constitution During this time, Madison and John Jay—a future chief justice on the U.S Supreme Court—helped Hamilton draft a series of essays called The Federalist Papers The essays stand as fundamental state-ments of U.S political philosophy
The Articles of CONFEDERATION had already begun to show inadequacies, as the federal government had no real power to collect the money necessary for its own defense The authors of The Federalist Papers argued that a strong federal government would constitute not
a tyranny but an improvement over the current system of relatively weak rule Their arguments helped allay the commonly held fears about central power
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Hamilton again served as a delegate from New York This time, his ideas were received with more favor In the drafting
of the new Constitution, and the creation of a more effective government, many of Hamilton’s Federalist beliefs came into play In the area of defense, for example, Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution read, “The Congress shall have Power To raise and support Armies To provide and maintain a Navy To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia.” The role of the government in raising finances to do these things would put Hamil-ton’s ideas to the test
Hamilton took on the test personally In
1789, when President Washington began to assemble the new federal government, he asked Hamilton to become the nation’s first secretary of the treasury For the following six years, Hamilton developed a fiscal and economic system based on a national coin-age, a national banking system, a revenue program to provide for the repayment of the national debt, and measures to encourage industrial and commercial development He
sought a vigorous, diversified economy that would also provide the nation with the means
to defend itself He stirred a considerable amount of controversy with certain propo-sals, such as the need for tariffs on imports, several kinds of excise taxes, the development
of natural resources, a friendship with England, and opposition to France during the French Revolution However, without such a concrete agenda, many historians have argued, the United States could not have survived its years of initial development Because of Hamilton’s decisive stance on some issues, a split occurred between, and even within, political parties Hamilton and JOHN ADAMS spoke the ideas of the Federalists Madison joined Jefferson in the DEMOCRATIC
-REPUBLICAN PARTY Even though Hamilton had previously worked alongside SECRETARY OF STATE
Jefferson, the two were now, as Washington noted, “daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks.” Hamilton stressed the need for a strong central government, while Jefferson emphasized individuals’ rights Their rivalry, among the most famous political clashes in U.S history, led to a significant and ongoing level of frustration for both sides Because of the deadlock, Hamilton retired from his secretarial position in 1795 and returned to thePRACTICE OF LAW
Through his service in government and his connections with the Schuyler family, Hamilton became a prominent and prosperous lawyer His practice extended to wealthy clients in New York and in other states, both individuals and partnerships It resembled the practices of modern corporate lawyers, because he also represented banks and companies
The bulk of his civil practice took place in maritime litigation, which boomed with Euro-pean interests in the U.S market His most important admiralty case involved the sale and export to Europe of large quantities of cotton and indigo Defendants Gouveneur and Kemble had incurred damages to the head merchant in their trade, Le Guen Hamilton took on the case
as attorney for Le Guen He was assisted
by AARON BURR, with whom he had worked in New York
In Le Guen v Gouveneur, Hamilton helped the merchant successfully sue his agents for
$120,000—at the time, one of the largest awards
in a personal damage suit.JAMES KENT, chancellor
REAL LIBERTY IS
NEITHER FOUND IN
DESPOTISM OR THE
EXTREMES OF
DEMOCRACY,BUT IN
MODERATE
GOVERNMENTS
—A LEXANDER
H AMILTON
192 HAMILTON, ALEXANDER
Trang 6of the New York bar, remembered Hamilton’s
performance in the trial as displaying “his
reasoning powers his piercing criticism, his
masterly analysis, and his appeals to the
judgment and conscience of the tribunal.” A
grateful Le Guen wanted to pay Hamilton a fee
commensurate with the size of the judgment
Hamilton refused anything more than $1,500
Burr took a much larger fee at his own
discretion This was the beginning of strained
developments between Hamilton and Burr that
would result in a future, climactic confrontation
As a private citizen, Hamilton had amassed
considerable power In letters to politicians and
newspapers, he continued to make a number of
government-related proposals At least four of
them figured into future developments in the U
S political structure First, he suggested dividing
each state into judicial districts as subdivisions
of the federal government’s judicial branch
Second, he proposed consolidating the federal
government’s revenues, ships, troops, officers,
and supplies as assets under its control Third,
he pushed for the enlargement of the legal
powers of the government by making certain
already existing laws permanent, particularly the
law authorizing the government to summon
militias to counteract subversive activities and
insurrections Finally, he proposed the addition
of laws that would give the courts power to
punishSEDITION Through letters to leaders and
citizens, as through his Federalist Papers,
Hamilton’s ideas were received, although not
always easily, into the political mainstream
In 1798 the United States prepared for war
with France Hamilton decided to rejoin the
Army as a major general He was assigned the
additional duties of inspector general until
1800 In 1800 Jefferson campaigned for
presi-dent with Hamilton’s former partner in the Le
Guen settlement, Burr, as his running mate The
two received identical numbers of electoral
votes for the 1800 presidential election At that
time all candidates ran for the presidency The
winner became president and the individual in
second place became vice president Hamilton,
an elector for New York, refused to go along
with the Federalists’ plans to deny Jefferson the
presidency Hamilton voted for Jefferson
in-stead of Burr, partly because he could stand
Burr even less than his ideological rival
Jefferson won the election
In 1804 Burr ran for governor of New York
and became embittered by more of Hamilton’s
insults during the campaign When Burr lost again, he challenged Hamilton to a duel On July 11, 1804, the two men met at Weehawken Heights, New Jersey Hamilton received a mortal wound from Burr’s pistol shot, and died
in New York City the next day
As the United States evolved in political, legal, and economic dimensions, Hamilton’s contributions remained part of its basic struc-ture His legacy went on to affect the way the rest of the world interpreted the proper role of government Numerous political experiments took place in the following centuries, but still, Hamilton’s notions of a strong central govern-ment made other systems appear weak in comparison In a letter to the Washington Post
on January 28, 1991, biographer Robert A
Hendrickson asserted that Hamilton’s doctrine lives up to its model status as “a beacon of freedom and financial success in the modern world It has peacefully discredited agrarianism,
COMMUNISM, and totalitarianism.”
FURTHER READINGS Brookhiser, Richard 2000 Alexander Hamilton, American.
New York: Free Press.
Chernow, Ron 2004 Alexander Hamilton New York:
Penguin.
Cooke, Jacob Ernest 1982 Alexander Hamilton: A Profile.
New York: Scribner.
Emery, Noemie 1982 Alexander Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait New York: Putnam.
Epstein, David F 2007 The Political Theory of the Federalist.
Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press.
Flaumenhaft, Harvey 1992 The Effective Republic, Adminis-tration and Constitution in the Thought of Alexander Hamilton Durham, NC: Duke Univ Press.
Randall, Willard Sterne 2003 Alexander Hamilton: A Life.
New York: HarperCollins.
CROSS REFERENCES Constitution of the United States; “Federalist, Number 10”
and “Federalist, Number 78” (Appendix, Primary Docu-ments).
HAMMER V DAGENHART
At the beginning of the twentieth century, U.S
reformers sought to end the practice of child labor Young children were sent into factories and mines to work long hours for low wages
Aside from the physical demands placed upon children, labor robbed them of a chance to obtain an education Some states enacted laws
to regulate child labor, but others ignored these efforts and found competitive advantages
in having a cheap supply of labor Congress
Trang 7finally responded in 1916, when it passed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, of September 1,
1916, c 432, 39 Stat 675 The statute prohibited the use of interstate commerce for goods and materials made with child labor Congress believed that the Constitution’s COMMERCE CLAUSE permitted it to act to regulate child labor, but the U.S Supreme Court thought differently In Hammer v Dagenhart, 247 U.S
251, 38 S Ct 529, 62 L Ed 1101 (1918), the Court ruled the act unconstitutional, basing its decision on a constricted interpretation of the Commerce Clause and an expansive view of state governments’ powers The decision pro-voked Justice OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES to write one of the most significant dissenting opinions
in the history of the U.S Supreme Court
Roland H Dagenhart filed a lawsuit in North Carolina on behalf of his sons Reuben and John, challenging the Keating-Owen Act
Under the provisions of the law, his two sons would have been barred from working in a cotton mill, as one son was under 14 years old and the older son was under 16 years of age Dagenhart asked the U.S district court to strike down the law as unconstitutional as a violation of the Commerce Clause and the
TENTH AMENDMENT The relevant part of the law prohibited the shipment of goods in interstate
or foreign commerce if“within thirty days prior
to the time of removal of such product”
children had been employed or permitted to help make them The law applied to children under the age of 16 who worked in mines; to children under the age of 14 who worked in mills, canneries, workshops, factories or manufacturing establishments; and to children between 14 and 16 years of age who worked more than eight hours per day, more than six days in any week, or after 7 p.m or before
6 a.m These provisions effectively barred the Dagenhart sons from working and thereby deprived the family of needed income The district court agreed with Dagenhart and held the act unconstitutional
The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, upheld the district court’s ruling JusticeWILLIAM DAY, in his majority opinion, agreed that the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states and with foreign countries However, the power to regulate did not mean that Congress had the power to prohibit certain commerce Day acknowledged that prior Court rulings had
upheld federal laws that banned the movement
of certain goods in interstate commerce but these decisions rested“upon the character of the particular subjects” at issue In Champion v Ames, 188 U S 321, 23 Sup Ct 321, 47 L Ed
492 (1903), the Court had upheld a law that banned the movement of lottery tickets in interstate commerce In Hipolite Egg Co v United States, 220 U S 45, 31 Sup Ct 364, 55
L Ed 364 (1911) the Court sustained the constitutionality of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which prohibited the shipping of impure foods and drugs in interstate commerce The Court had also upheld theMANN ACTin Hoke v United States, 227 U S 308, 33 Sup Ct 281, 57
L Ed 523 (1913) This law prohibited the movement of women in interstate commerce for the purposes of PROSTITUTION Finally, the Court had sustained a federal law that regulated the shipment of intoxicating liquors in inter-state commerce Justice Day noted that in this decision, Clark Distilling Co v Western Mary-land Railway Co., 242 U S 311, 37 Sup Ct 180,
61 L Ed 326 (1917), the Court had agreed that Congress could prohibit the shipment of liquor but only because of the “exceptional nature of the subject here regulated.”
Advocates of the child LABOR LAW believed that all of these decisions supported the right of Congress to ban the products of child labor in interstate commerce, but Justice Day concluded otherwise The key to the prior rulings was that interstate commerce was needed to accomplish the“harmful results.” With the child labor, law the goods in question were harmless The effect
of the act was to regulate child labor rather than
to regulate transportation in interstate com-merce In the Court’s view, this was an impermissible effect because of its definition
of“commerce.” The manufacture of goods and the mining of coal were not commerce, only the transportation of such things were
Justice Day was troubled by the expansive reading of the Commerce Clause by Congress If the Court had upheld this law,“all manufacture intended for interstate shipment would be brought under federal control.” He concluded that the framers of the Constitution would never have envisioned such a broad grant of authority, for it undercut the power of the states
to regulate commerce within their borders In addition, the Tenth Amendment reserved powers to the states’ governments, which included regulations “relating to the internal
194 HAMMER V DAGENHART
Trang 8trade and affairs of the States.” Thus, the
Court’s reading of the Commerce Clause and
the Tenth Amendment combined to defeat the
constitutionality of the child labor law It was
up to the states to regulate child labor; Day
noted that North Carolina had acted on the
issue by prohibiting children younger than 12
years of age from working A contrary
interpre-tation would have had catastrophic
conse-quences to the federal system of powers Day
concluded that “our system of government
[would] be practically destroyed” if Congress
could use the Commerce Clause to effect
changes in work conditions within the states
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a
dis-senting opinion joined by three other justices,
could barely contain his contempt for the
majority’s interpretation He faulted the Court
for imposing personal values “upon questions
of policy and morals.” In a famous statement,
Holmes declared:“I should have thought that if
we were to introduce our own moral
concep-tions where, in my opinion, they do not belong,
this was preeminently a case for upholding the
exercise of all its powers by the United States.”
Holmes rejected the idea that Congress could
not prohibit the movement of goods in
interstate commerce, whether the products were
judged harmful in themselves or the result of a
harmful practice He stated that “Regulation
means the prohibition of something,” and then
referred to prior rulings where the Court had
upheld federal laws that had prohibited actions
contrary to the wishes of Congress In his view,
Congress had sufficient authority to regulate
child labor The states were free to regulate their
internal affairs, but once goods crossed state
lines, the Commerce Clause gave Congress the
authority to regulate these shipments
The U.S Supreme Court reversed Dagenhart
in United States v Darby, 312 U.S 100, 312 U.S
657, 61 S Ct 451 (1941) In its ruling, the Court acknowledged the “powerful and now classic dissent of Mr Justice Holmes.”
vHAND, BILLINGS LEARNED Learned Hand served as a U.S district court judge from 1909 to 1924 and on the U.S.CIRCUIT COURTof Appeals from 1924 to 1951 Although
he was a great and respected legal figure, he was never appointed to the U.S Supreme Court
Hand cannot be classified as a liberal or conservative because he did not allow his personal biases to affect his judicial positions
He was careful to base his decisions onPUBLIC POLICYand laws as he understood them, and he did not believe it was the court’s job to create public policy To Hand’s way of thinking, human values are relative Although one value—such as protecting young people from obscenity—may prevail in a certain case, it might not prevail in another And he felt that the role of court decisions should be to provide realistic guidelines on which to base future decisions
Hand was born January 27, 1872, in Albany, New York His was a distinguished family, with both his grandfather and his father being lawyers and Democrats He was an only child, and his father died when he was fourteen Hand attended private schools and graduated with honors and a degree in philosophy from Harvard in 1893 He graduated from Harvard Law School with honors in 1896 A year later he began practicing law in the state of New York
Billings Learned Hand 1872–1961
1872 Born,
Albany, N.Y.
◆
◆
1893 Graduated from Harvard College
1896 Graduated from Harvard Law School
1917 Invented the incitement test in
Masses Publishing Co v Patten
1914–18 World War I
◆
1909–24 Served as U.S.
district judge
1924–51 Served on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
1939–45 World War II
◆
1939 Became chief judge
of the Second Circuit
◆
1944 Gave
"The Spirit
of Liberty"
speech in Central Park
1950–53 Korean War
◆
1958 The
Bill of Rights
published
◆
1960 Third edition of The Spirit
of Liberty published
1961 Died, New York City
1961–73 Vietnam War
Trang 9In 1902 Hand married Frances A Fincke and moved to New York City Although successful,
he found law practice to be boring In 1909 newly elected president WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
appointed Hand to a federal judgeship At age 37, Hand was one of the youngest appointees ever He served the court for 15 years
A few years after his appointment, Hand supported Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party presidential candidacy against Taft and became the Progressive party’s candidate for chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals He undertook this first and last political venture of his career because of a concern that big business would control the nation Whatever Hand’s reasons, Taft never forgot Hand’s “disloyalty,”
and many believe that this act cost Hand his first chance to serve on the Supreme Court in 1922
Taft, who was then the chief justice of the U.S
Supreme Court, urged President WARREN G
HARDINGnot to nominate Hand
Throughout his career, Hand chose to follow his conscience while knowing he would forfeit promotions as a result For example, in 1917 Hand decided Masses Publishing Co v Patten, 244 F 535 (S.D.N.Y 1917), rev’d 246 F 24 (2d Cir 1917)
Masses was the first test of a new law, theESPIONAGE ACT OF1917 (Act of June 15, 1917, ch 30, 40 Stat
217) This act outlawed making“false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces whenthe United States is at war.” It also allowed the U.S mail to ban materials containing such statements Editors of an antiwar magazine, The Masses, took the New York City postmaster, Thomas G Patten,
to court for refusing to distribute the magazine Patten argued that theESPIONAGEAct allowed him
to ban the publication
The Masses case came before the Second District at the beginning ofWORLD WAR I, when the government viewed criticism of the war as a threat to national security It came also when Hand was being considered for appointment to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals
At that time, the legality of written or spoken words was usually judged by the probable result of the words—that is, if the words had the tendency to produce unlawful conduct, then they could be banned Hand took
a different approach: his solution focused on the words themselves, rather than on a guess at the public’s reaction to them He invented what became known as the incitement test: If the words told someone to break the law, if they instructed the person that it was a duty or interest to do so, then they could be banned The Masses magazine praised conscientious objectors and antiwar demonstrators, but it never actually told readers they should behave similarly For this reason, Hand ruled that the postmaster could not ban the magazine Masses was just one of the many opinions Hand wrote that decided issues for which no precedent existed at the Supreme Court level It
is an early example of Hand’s strong opinions about free speech—that it should be protected and defined as a critical ingredient to
democra-cy He struggled for the rest of his career to convince his colleagues of the importance and complexity of issues relating to the FIRST AMENDMENTto the U.S Constitution
Hand correctly predicted the consequences
of his decision in Masses before he announced
it The decision was immediately appealed and reversed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and he did not receive the appoint-ment to that court But over time the climate of the country and the courts would change, and
in the late 1960s the Supreme Court would adopt Hand’s incitement test as the standard for evaluating whether speech threatened security
Billings Learned Hand.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
196 HAND, BILLINGS LEARNED
Trang 10In 1924 Hand was appointed to the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
On the court, Hand served with many famous
judges, including conservative judge Thomas
Walter Swan, Hand’s first cousin Augustus
Noble Hand, Harrie Brigham Chase, Charles
Edward Clark, andJEROME N.FRANK
With his cousin and Swan, Hand made
many widely respected decisions Some
obser-vers credit the craftsmanship of these decisions
to the use of preconference memos, which were
unique to the Second Circuit at that time
Under this method, each judge reviewed each
case and drafted a tentative opinion without
consulting the others Only after each judge had
reached an independent conclusion did all the
conferring judges exchange memos and meet to
discuss the case This process encouraged more
diverse and thorough thinking than with the
usual method of approaching cases, in which
one judge took the lead early on and drafted a
single opinion
As a circuit court judge, Hand was limited
to applying precedents of the Supreme Court
and federal statutes in appeals before his court
He felt responsible to the precedents, and once
he was sure he understood the basic reason for a
law, he stood his ground despite any negative
effects the decision might cause
Hand was again considered for the Supreme
Court in 1931, this time by President HERBERT
HOOVER But Hoover felt obliged to offer the
position toCHARLES EVANS HUGHESfirst, with the
intention of appointing Hand when Hughes
refused To Hoover’s surprise, Hughes accepted
Hand became senior circuit judge of the
circuit court in 1939 when his predecessor,
Martin T Manton, was indicted and eventually
imprisoned for accepting bribes Nine years
later, the office of “senior circuit judge” was
renamed the office of“chief judge,” pursuant to
a revision in the federal judicial code See Act of
June 25, 1948, ch 646, S 46(c), 62 Stat 869, 871
(1948), codified as amended at 28 U.S.C S 46(c)
(1988) This was the highest position that Hand
was to hold in the courts
Hand’s final close call with the Supreme
Court came in 1942, whenFRANKLIN D.ROOSEVELT
was seeking a replacement for Justice JAMES F
BYRNES, whom he had appointed to a cabinet
position Hand was in the running, and his
colleagues organized a strong campaign to
persuade the president to choose him However,
in January 1943—the month that Hand turned 71—Roosevelt appointed WILEY B RUTLEDGE, of Iowa: Rutledge was only 48 years old, and Roosevelt had insisted in 1937 that justices should not serve past age seventy Ironically, Rutledge died in 1949, whereas Hand was still active and productive for another twelve years
Hand influenced the Supreme Court pro-foundly, though he did not serve on it He was quoted in Supreme Court opinions and widely cited in legal journals Even during his lifetime,
he was widely regarded as one of the greatest judges in the English-speaking world
In 1944 Hand delivered a public speech that brought his thinking to the attention of people
in nonlegal circles His address, “The Spirit of Liberty,” was delivered in New York’s Central Park to more than 1 million people The New Yorker, the New York Times, Life, and Reader’s Digest all reprinted portions of his address
Hand also publicly denounced McCarthyism during an address in Albany in 1952
Hand served on the council of the American Law Institute, a group of law professors, judges, and lawyers who organize and summarize the law
in publications called the “Restatements of the Law” and “Model Codes,” two bodies of legal authority designed to provide a clear, practice-oriented exposition of legal rules, precedents, and principles
When Hand retired from the Second Circuit
in 1951, he had served as a federal judge longer than anyone else in U.S history During his career he had written almost 3,000 legal opinions They are famous for their careful construction and sharp understanding of all forces at work He showed an ability to clarify legal concepts, even those in specialized areas such as admiralty (shipping) law, patent law, andIMMIGRATIONlaw
After he retired, Hand still sat on the federal bench, wrote opinions, and handled a nearly full workload Toward the end of his life,
he complained to a friend that he was only writing 20 to 25 opinions per month, instead of his customary 50 to 60 The Spirit of Liberty, a collection of his papers and speeches originally published in 1952 had a third edition in 1960, while his 1958 Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures
at Harvard were published as The Bill of Rights (1958)
IF WE ARE TO KEEP OUR DEMOCRACY, THERE MUST BE ONE COMMANDMENT:
THOU SHALT NOT RATION JUSTICE
—B ILLINGS L EARNED
H AND