Law School Summit & Legal Education

• Midterm paper is due today.

Law School Event

• An event for students interested in attending law school called the Law School Summit, is scheduled for tomorrow evening from 4:00 to 7:00 PM at 180 Main Street (Sacred Heart Church).
• This summit includes networking opportunities and seminars covering topics like:
  • What it is like to go to law school
  • Being a lawyer as a career
  • Preparing for law school at UD
  • Sessions in labor law, criminal law, government and judicial law, and health law
• Attendees are expected to wear business attire.
• There is a QR code is available for registration.

Personal Anecdotes

• Personal graduate school experience in American legal history, highlighting the challenges of understanding substantive law versus procedural law.
• Enjoys attending law school conferences and presentations because law schools tend to have more money for accommodations and food.
• Law schools have a wider breadth of interests and multidisciplinary perspectives due to diverse academic backgrounds of students and faculty.

Failure of Reconstruction

• Topic is the failure of reconstruction, a depressing topic.
• Reconstruction as an effort by northern Republicans and southern freedmen to build a biracial democracy in the U.S. South.
• Constitutional mechanisms such as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were created to support this effort.
• By 1880, reconstruction had basically ended, with the textbook date being 1877.

Reasons for the End of Reconstruction

• Southern Democrats returned to power over time.
• Congress eventually passed a law pardoning many Confederate soldiers and officeholders.
• Southern Democrats began to vote and eventually regain control, especially where whites outnumbered blacks.
• Some Democrats believed African-American voting was part of the new landscape, but favored coalitions where African Americans voted for them under their leadership.
• Over the 1870’s, the Democratic Party becomes more competitive in the South, winning elections and gaining control of legislatures.
• Democrats were not able to completely push African Americans from power until around 1900.
• The power of the Republican Party in the South was greatly reduced.
• Freedmen wanted land reform to take plantation land and break it up into small, individual holdings, enabling independent lives as peasant farmers.
• White Southerners did not want plantation land broken up.
• There were constitutional issues as land could be confiscated from Confederate leaders only for their lifetimes.

Property Transmission

• Property transmits to children, who have a claim on it, and after that person dies it will pass down to their children.
• Treason cannot affect the "attainder of blood," meaning the children of traitors cannot be punished for their parents' acts.
• Republicans thought this was too radical and did not support land reform.
• The Republican vision for the South involved freedmen working on cotton plantations for wages under a fair exchange on free labor principles.
• Cotton was seen as indispensable to rebuilding the South.

Emergence of Debt Peonage

• Sharecropping emerged due to devastated post-Civil War economy in the South.
• Sharecropping was previously a tool for social mobility before the Civil War.
• People with land would allow laborers to grow crops in exchange for a share of the crop.
• After the Civil War, people planted cotton, flooding the world market and causing prices to collapse.
• Sharecroppers often couldn't cover their debts, leading landowners to roll the debt over and they get stuck in a cycle.
• Freedmen were mired in debt and could not leave the land because they owed the owner money.
• Debt peonage is not slavery, but is a state of being unfree.
• Freedman households had control of how their labor was deployed, offering more autonomy relative to slavery.
• Freedmen ended up in a state of dependency on southern whites, who generally aligned with the Democratic Party.

Labor Unrest

• In the North, growing labor unrest occurred due to boom and bust economy.
• Surviving in big industry meant keeping prices low which resulted in constant price cutting, downward pressure on wages, and serious economic crises.
• Massive strikes and labor unrest required troops to suppress.
• Northern Republicans were more interested in addressing labor unrest than Southern issues.

Political Changes

• The Republican Party, which had fought the South, was aging out.
• Younger generations were more interested in labor unrest and accessing overseas markets.
• The judiciary dismantled reconstruction efforts, especially the reach of the Civil War amendments.
• The formal end of reconstruction came after a disputed election in 1876 between Samuel Tilden (Democrat) and Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican).

Compromise of 1877

• The Compromise of 1877 resulted in Republicans retaining the White House, stewardship over economic development and foreign policy.
• In exchange reconstruction ended.
• The last Union troops were removed from South Carolina and Florida.
• The South was allowed to manage its own racial policies, with the end of reconstruction dated to 1877.

Federal Courts and Reconstruction Amendments

• The judiciary reviewed and struck down federal legislation more frequently in the 19th century.
• The Supreme Court limited the reach of the 14th Amendment.

Slaughterhouse Cases

• The Slaughterhouse Cases dealt with an issue in Louisiana, specifically New Orleans, related to public health rather than race relations.
• A state law required all butchers in New Orleans to slaughter animals at a centralized abattoir (slaughterhouse).
• This was argued as a public health regulation to address the accumulation of waste and prevent diseases.
• Some argue the law’s purpose was to allow New Orleans to be competitive with Chicago.
• Butchers sued, arguing that the law threatened their livelihood and interfered with their right to make a living.
• They claimed the regulation violated the privileges and immunities protected by the 14th Amendment.
• The 14th amendment includes the birthright citizenship clause, due process clause, equal protection clause, and a clause protecting the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States.
• A lawyer Stephen Campbell argued that a broad reading of the 14th Amendment could be used to strike down government activity and undo reconstruction.
• Chief Justice Miller argued that the 14th Amendment primarily aimed to protect the freedmen.
• The 14th Amendment protects certain federal rights, including those in the First Amendment (speech, petition, religion).
• The 14th Amendment protects rights from Crandall v. Nevada, including the implied constitutionally protected right to travel.

USV Cruickshank

• The case eliminated any ambiguities in Slaughterhouse.
• Cruikshank dealt with the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana, stemming from a disputed election between Republicans and Democrats.
• A massacre of southern Republicans (white and black) occurred.
• Federal indictments did not clearly specify the source of the rights that were violated.
• Indictments were made under the Ku Klux Klan Acts, for frustrating people from exercising their federally protected rights.
• There are state and federal citizenships, as well as some duality.
• The Supreme Court washed its hands of reconstruction by reestablishing the status quo.

Civil Rights Cases

• The cases came out of the Civil Rights Act of 1876, which expanded protections related to pyramid/buckets of rights (Civil, political, and social)
• Charles Summer wanted social rights included.
• The court concluded that social rights aren't protected by the 14th amendment because it requires the state to actively discriminate.
• In order for the amendment to come in, the state has to actively discriminate against you.

Native Americans

• Native Americans were not covered by the 14th Amendment because they were members of different (dependent) nations.
• The removal policy failed as the country expanded.
• The concentration policy ceded great deals of territory via treaties, and small portions of land were reserved for Native Americans (reservations).
• Annuities failed to be forthcoming, and Native Americans were crushed as a military force after the Civil War.
• In the 1880s, the U.S. revamped Indian policy by passing the Dawes Severalty Act.
• The act abolished tribal governments, declared Native Americans citizens, and allotted land (often not good farmland) to heads of households.

Chinese Immigrants

• Chinese immigrants arrived in the 1850s due to the discovery of gold in California.
• The Chinese Exclusion Act amend immigration laws blocked the Chinese, and by the 1920's blocked all Asians except Filipinos.
• Children of immigrants did become citizens.
• The Wo v. Hopkins case, dealt with regulating laundromats made of wood.
• All Anglo companies were given licenses, whereas the Chinese were turned down.
• A violation of state action doctrine resulted, because it targeted a specific race.

Bradwell v Illinois

• In 1872, a woman lawyer was not allowed practice law
• Supreme Court ruled that the 14th amendment doesnt apply to the right of likelihood
• Joseph Bradley argued that women are the weaker sex.
• The Supreme Court upheld laws restricted womens rights because it wasn't a privilege to be protected by the 14th amendment
• These rights and areas of protection that the civil rights protected for minorities was not translated to women during this time.