A Social Revolution? (1 of 6)
This is the first of an intended six posts about the social revolution created in part by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The next post will review Brown I and the third, Brown II. The fourth post in this series will discuss events from Brown II to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The fifth post will cover the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1968 The last post in this series will examine the Supreme Court’s Griswold decision. This post briefly covers a selection of related facts and events from 1945 to 1953 to characterize the context facing the Court in 1954
A selected chronology
In 1945 seven African Americans were lynched.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court and the 2020 Census (1 of 3)
The Supreme Court’s decision on the 2020 Census and the citizenship question illustrates the deep and partisan divide on the Court. This first of two posts on the Supreme Court and the 2020 Census focuses solely on the justices’ opinions from both the conservative and liberal justices. It does so primarily by providing excerpts that contain the key points in the majority and dissenting opinions. The next post will deal with two earlier Court decisions on the census that illustrate the poltical nature of the census. .
Background
The Supreme Court reviewed the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York’s decision on the citizenship question.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court and the Census (2 of 3)
As noted by Nathaniel Persily, “In the Constitution itself, the census is ‘about’ representation, money, and race, so we should not be surprised to learn that courtroom controversies over the census have persisted with respect to these three themes.” For a brief review of the history of census litigation and controversy see Swanson and Walashek. This post covers two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate the political significance of the decennial census.
Context
A significant issue in court cases deals with how the census should count. The issue of how to count derives in part from the Census Bureau’s post-census estimation of the accuracy of the decennial enumeration.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court, Census Citizenship Question, and Voter Suppression
This last post in a series of posts on the census divides into two parts. This post, Part A, focuses on the key points made by the majority and minority opinions on the census and citizenship question. The excerpts from the Court’s opinions provide the basis for the next, part B. Part B examines the contexts of the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause opinions and the Administrative Procedure Act opinions of the justices. It ends with commentary on these two issues, connecting them to voter suppression. Voter suppression is the main theme running through this series of posts on the census.
Part A
The Supreme Court’s decision on the 2020 Census illustrates the deep and partisan divide on the Court.… Read the rest
Supreme Court and the 2020 census citizenship question – Part B-1
t B-1
Part B-1 of this post discusses one of two key decision points in the Supreme Court’s decision on the citizenship question in the 2020 census, the Constitution’s Enumeration clause. Part B-2 will cover the second decision point, the Administrative Procedure Act. Part A covered the Court’s opinions on both these points.
Enumeration Clause
The history of the census – citizenship nexus
My lay opinion says that the New York District Court and the Supreme Court probably erred in finding that the Enumeration Clause was not relevant to the 2020 Census citizenship question issue. As highlighted below, I say this for two reasons.… Read the rest
The Supreme Court and the 2020 Census Citizenship Question: Part B-2
This final post in the series on the census analyzes the Court’s opinion regarding the capricious and arbitrary standard of the Administrative Procedure Act. It also discusses the possible real rationale behind the administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The Administrative Procedure Act
The Administrative Procedure Act established procedures for federal agency formal and informal rulemaking. The Act defines a rule expansively to include any “agency statement of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or describing the organization, procedure, or practice requirements of an agency.” The history of the act suggests that matters of great significance should be accorded more elaborate public procedures.… Read the rest
Plutocratic Populism
“It is impossible to make sense of our current politics without wrestling with this central contradiction of the past twenty-five years of Republican governance.” This quote identifies the central paradox in understanding our current political situation as addressed in a recent paper by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The “contradiction” in the quote refers to (1) the biggest complaint about taxes among ordinary Republicans has consistently been that the rich and corporations do not pay their fair share vs. (2) the intent of governing Republicans to ensure that these groups increasingly pay less taxes.
Our current political scene generates a great many topics that seek to explain our polity of today.… Read the rest
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