The strange birth and unlikely history of constitutional equality

Journal of American History

Volumn 75, Issue 3, 1988, Pages 747-762

  Katz, Stanley N ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84963072175     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: 19452314     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1901528     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics since Independence (New York, 1987), 64-65.
2. Carl L. Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (Madison, 1909)
3. Carl L. Becker, The Eve of the Revolution: A Chronicle of the Breach with England (New Haven, 1918)
4. Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781-1789 (New York, 1950)
5. Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (New York, 1968).
6. Hudgins v. Wrights, 1 Hen. & M. 134 (Virginia 1806).
7. Germaine de Stael, Considerations sur la revolution francaise, ed. Jacques Godechot (Paris, 1983), 214.
8. Jean-Yves LeSaux. Considerations sur la revolution francaise, ed. Jacques Godechot (Paris, 1983), 221
9. “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,” Aug. 26, 1789, art
10. Alexis de Tocqueville, Lancien regime et la revolution (Paris, 1953), 335, 169.
11. Stael, Considerations, 121-22.
12. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (Paris, 1957), 220
13. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, De I’esprit des lots (Paris, [1868]), 107
14. Godechot, ed., Constitutions de la France, 424.
15. After 1789, equality remained a fundamental French political value. Indeed, the Restoration Charter of June 1814 upheld the notion of civil equality (“The French are equal before the law, their ranks or titles otherwise notwithstanding,” art. I), as did the Constitutional Charter of August 1830 (same wording, art. I). Yet, one can make too much of the French devotion to equality. Slavery was reinstated in French overseas territories by Napoleon in 1802, and it was not finally abolished until the Revolution of 1848. Frenchwomen did not obtain the right to vote until 1945, and women were only guaranteed equal rights by the Constitution of 1946
16. Godechot, ed., Constitutions de la France, 219, 247, 374. Lallement, ed., Choix de rapports, opinions et discoursprononces a la Tribune Rationale, I, 215, 216, 201-2.
17. Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era, trans. Rita Kimber and Robert Kimber (Chapel Hill, 1980), 165, 186-87.
18. Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era, trans. Rita Kimber and Robert Kimber (Chapel Hill, 1980), 165, 183-85.
19. John Ashworth, ‘Agrarians’ and Aristocrats’: Party Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (London, 1983), 66.
20. Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1857).
21. Boiling v. Sharpe, 347 US. 497 (1954).
22. United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)
23. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
24. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886).
25. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 308 (1880).
26. Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall 36, 81 (1873).
27. Powell v. Pennsylvania, 127 U.S. 678, 686 (1888)
28. Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Company, 220 U.S. 61, 78 (1917)
29. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 208 (1926).
30. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 543 (1896).
31. Daniel T. Rodgers to Stanley N. Katz, Feb. 10, 1988 (in Stanley N. Katz’s possession)
32. Gong hum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, 85 (1927).
33. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).
34. Yick Wo v. Hopkins., 369 (emphasis added).
35. Alfred H. Kelly, “The School Desegregation Case,” in Quarrels That Have Shaped the Constitution, ed. John A. Garraty (New York, 1962), 243-68
36. Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York, 1976)
37. Dennis J. Hutchinson, “Unanimity and Desegregation: Decisionmaking in the Supreme Court, 1948-1958,” Georgetown Law Journal, 68 (Oct. 1979), 1-96
38. Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1930 (Chapel Hill, 1987).
39. “ Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216 (1944).
40. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
41. Kenneth Karst, “Why Equality Matters,” Georgia Law Review, 17 (Winter 1983), 245-89, 248.
42. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
43. On alienage, see Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365 (1971). On illegitimacy, see Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68 (1968)
44. Weber v. Aetna Casualty and Surety Company, 406 U.S. 164 (1972).
45. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973)
46. Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976).
47. On gender discrimination, see Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S.
48. Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S
49. On wealth discrimination, see James v. Valtierra, 402 U.S. 137 (1971)
50. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973)
51. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471 (1970)
52. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corporation, 429 U.S. 252 (1977)
53. Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, Ail F.2d 1286 (Fifth Cir., 1971)
54. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S.
55. Reedv. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971).
56. Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 401 U.S. 424 (1971)
57. Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976).
58. Archibald Cox, “Foreword; Constitutional Adjudication and the Promotion of Human Rights,” Harvard Law Review, 80 (Nov. 1966), 91-122, esp. 91. Westen holds that statements promoting equality are inevitably grounded in some particular notion of substantive right. The additional step of translating statements of rights into statements of equality is seen by Westen as unnecessary and conceptually confusing. Westen’s definition of equality is highly formalistic: the logical principle that likes should be treated alike and unalikes should be treated unalike. For Westen, areas of equal protection jurisprudence, such as racial discrimination, have little to do with that principle. He seeks to pierce the language of equal protection opinions to reveal the substantive right that forms the “real” basis of the decision. In the case of racial discrimination, for example, Westen identifies the substantive right of everyone to be free of racial stigmatization
59. Peter Westen, “The Empty Idea of Equality,” Harvard Law Review, 95 (Jan 1982), 537-96.
60. Westen’s replies to critics: Peter Westen, “On ‘Confusing Ideas’: Reply,” Yale Law Journal, 91 (May 1982), 1153-65
61. Peter Westen, “The Meaning of Equality in Law, Science, Math, and Morals: A Reply,” Michigan Law Review, 81 (Jan. 1983), 604-63
62. Peter Westen, “To Lure the Tarantula from Its Hole: A Response,” Columbia Law Review, 83 (June 1983), 1186-1208.
63. Thomas Green to Katz, Feb. 11, 1988 (in Katz’s possession)
64. Karst, “Equality,” 247-49.
65. Max Gallo, Lettre ouverte a Maximilien Robespierre sur les nouveau muscadins (Paris, 1986), 157-58.
66. Rousseau, Du contrat social, 220.