 | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(March 2022) |
An anticanon is a legal text that is now viewed as wrongly reasoned or decided. [1] [2] The term "anticanon" stands in distinction to the canon, which contains basic principles or rulings that almost all people support. [3]
The anticanon in U.S. constitutional law is a small set of U.S. Supreme Court judgements that have subsequently become widely considered to have been grievously mistaken for their poor legal reasoning and negative consequences. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Anticanon judgments usually uphold government policies that promote discrimination and oppression. [9] Many have never been formally overturned, though the Supreme Court has usually limited their later effects, rhetorically repudiated them, and refused to cite them in subsequent cases.
These cases are: [4]
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): held that the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and thus they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. [10] Overturned by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): established the doctrine of separate but equal by holding that racial segregation does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment as long as facilities are equal in quality. [11] Overturned (de facto) by Brown v. Board of Education, which held that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. [11]
Lochner v. New York (1905): held that a New York statute prescribing maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment. [12] Lochner is part of the Lochner era in constitutional law, wherein the Supreme Court struck down many state economic regulations under the doctrine of substantive due process. [13] : 36 The Lochner era ended in the late 1930s, usually attributed to progressive reformer Franklin D. Roosevelt's court-packing threat, with the switch in time that saved nine in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) (upholding a minimum wage law enacted by Washington state). [13] : 47
Insular Cases (1901): held that constitutional rights do not automatically extend to all places under American control, including those living in unincorporated territories such as Puerto Rico. [14] : 15 The Insular Cases were never overturned, but Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized them in a concurrence to United States v. Vaello Madero , 596 U.S. ___ (2022) (holding that United States citizens living in Puerto Rico could be excluded from the Supplemental Security Income program). He said the Insular Cases are "shameful", "have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes", and "deserve no place in our law." [15]
Buck v. Bell (1927): held that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the "unfit", including intellectually disabled, did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [16] The holding was weakened by Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), which prohibited compulsory sterilization of male habitual criminals. [17] Federal statutes, including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, also provide protections for people with disabilities, defined as both physical and mental impairments.
Korematsu v. United States (1944): upheld the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II, permitting the removal of West Coast Japanese Americans to exclusion camps. Decided on the same day as Ex parte Endo , which held that loyal citizens could not be detained without a hearing. Ex parte Endo effectively ended Japanese American exclusion and internment. Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly repudiated the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii (vacating the injunction against Executive Order 13780, also known as also known Travel Ban 2.0, and thereby allowing it to take effect). The statement has no precedential effect, and so does not legally "overrule" Korematsu, because it was dicta. [18]
Other cases that have been denounced to significant but lesser extents include:
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and thus they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, being widely denounced for its overt racism, perceived judicial activism, poor legal reasoning, and crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later. Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the south lasted into the 1960s.
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II. The decision has been widely criticized, with some scholars describing it as "an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry", and as "a stain on American jurisprudence". The case is often cited as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii.
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court holding that a New York State statute that prescribed maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers' right to freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision has been effectively overturned.
John Marshall Harlan was an American lawyer and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1877 until his death in 1911. He is often called "The Great Dissenter" due to his many dissents in cases that restricted civil liberties, including the Civil Rights Cases, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Giles v. Harris. Many of Harlan's views expressed in his notable dissents would become the official view of the Supreme Court starting from the 1950s Warren Court and onward. His grandson John Marshall Harlan II was also a Supreme Court justice.
Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if they are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections come from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Substantive due process demarks the line between those acts that courts hold to be subject to government regulation or legislation and those that courts place beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. In recent opinions, Justice Clarence Thomas has called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
A Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibit the deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the federal and state governments, respectively, without due process of law.
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction of slavecatcher Edward Prigg as a result.
The Lochner era was a period in American legal history from 1897 to 1937 in which the Supreme Court of the United States is said to have made it a common practice "to strike down economic regulations adopted by a State based on the Court's own notions of the most appropriate means for the State to implement its considered policies". The court did this by using its interpretation of substantive due process to strike down laws held to be infringing on economic liberty or private contract rights. The era takes its name from a 1905 case, Lochner v. New York. The beginning of the era is usually marked earlier, with the Court's decision in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897), and its end marked forty years later in the case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), which overturned an earlier Lochner-era decision.
The Supreme Court of Missouri is the highest court in the state of Missouri. It was established in 1820 and is located at 207 West High Street in Jefferson City, Missouri. Missouri voters have approved changes in the state's constitution to give the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction – the sole legal power to hear – over five types of cases on appeal. Pursuant to Article V, Section 3 of the Missouri Constitution, these cases involve:
The Supreme Court of the United States is the only court specifically established by the Constitution of the United States, implemented in 1789; under the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Court was to be composed of six members—though the number of justices has been nine for most of its history, this number is set by Congress, not the Constitution. The court convened for the first time on February 2, 1790.
The Reconstruction Amendments, or the Civil War Amendments, are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870. The amendments were a part of the implementation of the Reconstruction of the American South which occurred after the war.
Tuaua v. United States is a court case, originally filed in 2012, in which a group of American Samoans sued the State Department and the Obama administration. They sued to force the government to recognize American Samoans' birthright citizenship, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that anyone born in the United States is automatically granted citizenship.
The Fuller Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1888 to 1910, when Melville Fuller served as the eighth Chief Justice of the United States. Fuller succeeded Morrison R. Waite as Chief Justice after the latter's death, and Fuller served as Chief Justice until his death, at which point Associate Justice Edward Douglass White was nominated and confirmed as Fuller's replacement.
A campaign finance reform amendment refers to any proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to authorize greater restrictions on spending related to political speech, and to overturn Supreme Court rulings which have narrowed such laws under the First Amendment. Several amendments have been filed since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the Occupy movement.
Government by Judiciary is a 1977 book by constitutional scholar and law professor Raoul Berger which argues that the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution contrary to the original intent of the framers of this Amendment and that the U.S. Supreme Court has thus usurped the authority of the American people to govern themselves and decide their own destiny. Berger argues that the U.S. Supreme Court is not actually empowered to rewrite the U.S. Constitution – including under the guise of interpretation – and that thus the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently overstepped its designated authority when it used its powers of interpretation to de facto rewrite the U.S. Constitution in order to reshape it more to its own liking.
United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U.S. ___ (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the constitutionality of the exclusion of United States citizens residing in Puerto Rico from the Supplemental Security Income program. In an 8–1 decision, the Court ruled that as Congress had been granted broad oversight of United States territories by Article Four of the United States Constitution, the exclusion of the territories by Congress from programs like Supplemental Security Income did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Fitisemanu v. United States was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to consider if the Insular Cases should be overturned and whether people living in American territories such as American Samoa are guaranteed birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This discussion raises the question of whether other constitutional systems have their own "anticanons." That question exceeds this Article's scope, but two possible examples come to mind.