> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Wojtek Sokolowski
>
> Nathan, do not forget that racial seggregation in this country was
> abolished not by the so-called "elected representatives" in congress but by
> courts, that is lawyers.
This is one of the enduring myths that feeds the lure of the lawyer-hero. The Supreme Court did almost nothing under the Constitution to substantively end segregation, with the singular but important exception of Brown v. Board of Education. And remember, that was done to overturn a previous Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson which had been part of a whole post-Civil War Supreme Court legacy that overturned the 1875 legislative Civil Rights Acts that would have barred segregation in the South.
It was lawyers who through the courts overturned that 1875 legislation that would have barred segregation in all public accomodations, inns, public transport and places of amusement. It was lawyers who undermined the national legislative commitment to desegregation (however weak) that was installed after the Civil War, just as it was lawyers through Dred Scott who helped precipitate the Civil War.
As for Brown v. Board, the enforcement behind it was incredibly weak and slow and when the Court refused to extend desegregation into the suburbs, it became close to meaningless.
The real substantive desegregation came only with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and more importantly the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Most major court cases have been elaborations on those laws, but have often been restrictive interpretations of those laws. Remember that the 1991 Civil Rights Act was passed to restore anti-discrimination rights that the Supreme Court had stripped from the law.
The recent decisions overturning of affirmative action laws -- which themselves helped encourage initiative attacks like Prop 209 -- is one more example where lawyers and courts have been more reactionary than legislative and administrative decisions.
The reality is that except for an incredibly short period in the late 50s and 60s, the history of the Supreme Court has been one of enforcing segregation and discrimination in a far more reactionary way than most legislative bodies.
> Do not also forget that our *only* line of
> defence against corporate malfeasance are those 'sleazy' lawyers willing to
> take cases on a contingency basis. I would go as far as saying that the
> court system and vast supply of litigation-happy lawyers is the life
> support that keeps democracy alive in this country.
Only because that same lawyer culture creates a bias against regulatory and administrative procedures that would be a far more efficient and responsible system of curbing corporate crime. Creating a lottery system of justice with "private attorney generals" is an anti-democratic system of evading formal democratic regulation of corporate abuse. Our contingent-lawyer system of private justice may be better than nothing, but in many ways it also acts as an ideological salve for individuals that undermines demands for more comprehensive social reform.
-- Nathan Newman