>
>I don't have a legal background, but it seems to me that the legal case
>for basing reparations would be weaker because the individuals are dead,
>and then people who have a grandmother who was into genealogy as a hobby
>would be benefitted, while those who don't know would not qualify. And
>records on names of slaves were never particularly good. People's last
>names were changed all of the time.
I'm a lawyer. The issue is a matter of legislative policy, not a legal claim. There is no legal claim, not because the slaves are dead, but because slavery was legal. At law, dead people may recover, or living people may recover on their behalf, in certain circumstances, if there is a legally cognizable wrong. For example, if the cops illegally beat you to death, your survivors may sue them on your behalf for deprivations of your due process rights, and on their own behalf for the losses they incurred because of your wrongful death. Your survivors would have to do this within the statute of limitation for these claims, but if they did, the fact that you are dead would not be an impediment to the lawsuit. In fact, in a wrongful death claim, or claim for deprivation of life without due process of law, it would be a necesasry condition.
However, here there are wrongs the law recognignizes as such and for which it allows for recovery. With slavery, a moral wrong, there was no legal wrong done to the slaves. Therefore, if there is compensation due, the legislature must decide that whatever the law once said, slavery was wrong, and the descendents of the slaves should be compensated. Figuring out who should get compensation might be more or less difficult, but need not be: since virtually all African Americans who can trace their ancestry back to, say, 1930, are descendents of slaves, all of them should be compensated if any of them should be. Any formula will overcompensate some and underconpensate others, but that is the nature of formulae. It is not an objection to compensating people who deserve it that you can't get it exactly right. That principle would wipe out tort law. There could be no compensation, for example, for wrongful death.
--jks
>
>
>
>>However, has there ever been a class action suit based on people denied
>the right to vote in 1960? That should have some estimable cash
>value. Same with being denied access to a school or right to do
>business. It wasn't clear what value Rodney King having his civil rights
>violated should be, but he still won an award and they came up with a
>number.
There have been a lot of voting rights lawsuits. The remedy for violations of the 15th amendment and the Voting Rights Act has been deemed to be injunctive: fix it so there are no more violations. Likewise with school desegregation (14th A equal protection clause). Lawsuits for violations of what you call "the right to do business," probably refers to 42 USC 1981 and 1982, prohibiting racial discrimination in contarcting and property ownership, typically do have monetary remedies.
Justin Schwartz _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com