What are some reasons that Plessy v. Ferguson was a bad decision by the Supreme Court?

Question

In 1896, the Supreme Court heard the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, a part-black man, was arrested for refusing to move out of the white section of train. He believed that segregation, the legal separation of blacks and whites, was unfair. He brought his case to the Supreme Court. They ruled that segregation was legal, as long as the facilities of blacks and whites are equal. How was this a bad decision?

Answer 1

A great place to start would be with the lone dissent in this case --by Justice John Marshall Harlan.

For instance, here are a few key snippets [my summary in brackets]:

[#1 - goes against equal rights guaranteed in the Constitution (esp. 14th amendment), and against personal liberty]:

"such legislation as that here in question is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, national and state but with the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone within the United States...."

[#2 - abridges the personal liberties of citizens]

"The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statues is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens....If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so, and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each...."

[#3 - is a 'badge of servitude', which would violate the 13th amendment]

"The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

[#4 - the effect of poisoning relations between the races]

"What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation. . .""

See an overview of "Harlan's Great Dissent" :
http://www.louisville.edu/library/law/harlan/harlthom.html

For the full text of his dissent.see:
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/plessy/dissent.html

Answer 2

When the Supreme Court tried to validate LA's decision of segregation, it seemed they were trying to provide the old "Seperate but equal" thing. However, after reading the case it seems that Plessy was only 1/8th black, with the other 7/8ths white. How do you give someone like that equal rights? He was not a black man, and he was not really white. This was something that was left for the states to decide on their own. When in fact this should have been an issue that the Supreme Court decided. It should have federally declared how much blood makes you black or white. With the standard then laid out, the states could then decide how best to go about these types of issues. Seems to me the Court washed their hands of this.

Answer 3

It was a bad decision because the Supreme Court could have ended segregation then, but for the next sixty years or so whites looked back on this as the Supreme Court's endorsement of segregation

Answer 4

It denied the "melting pot" myth of American. This plagues us down to the present moment, as we print ballots in Tagalog, Spanish, Chinese, Korean. No way to ensure the continuity of a nation.

It set back the cause of civil rights by scores of years.

"Separate but equal" was economically unsound (two schools?, two busses? two train cars? two water fountains?); morally unsound, creating a sub-class of humans; socially unsound (that "second" school was not so good, so folks didn't get educated properly which is the best way to destroy democracy); and politically unsound (why would I want to go to a black doctor who got into med school because she was black, not because she prevailed over the other applicants).

If the court had found the other way, America would be a happier place today for EVERY American, black, white, brown, and lavendar. ;-)
.

Answer 5

2.) generic the "separate-yet-equivalent" doctrine, upholding segregation this is whilst the courtroom mentioned that slaves have been sources and that that they had no stunning to sue in courtroom.

Answer 6

Here is a Transcript of an interview on your question.

The law, the court and Roberts
The issue: The makeup, role and tenure of the U.S. Supreme Court.
**********************************************************************

Cal: When the Constitution established a Supreme Court, I seriously doubt the Founders expected this branch of government to overpower the other co-equal branches.

Bob: Here we go.

Cal: Forecasting things to come was Justice John Marshall's usurpation of power to the court when he unilaterally declared in Marbury v. Madison (1803) that the court could overturn any law passed by Congress if, in its view, that law violates the Constitution. We now have judges who believe, as the late Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes opined, that "the Constitution is what the judges say it is," rather than a document that says what it means. As a result, the Supreme Court has become a law unto itself and stirred enormous controversy over its rulings.

Bob: First, Cal, let me congratulate you on your grasp of history. Impressive, but selective. You conservatives have used the Supreme Court as a convenient punching bag whenever a decision doesn't take a right turn. Where was the outrage over Bush v. Gore?

Cal: Do you really want to go there, Bob?

Bob: Maybe not, but the truth is that conservatives complain about the court, not because decisions don't pass the constitutional test, but because they don't pass the conservative test. Of course the Supreme Court must interpret the Constitution on occasion. The Founders wrote this greatest of documents 218 years ago. They never could have anticipated the changes ahead. I realize most conservatives still think we're living 200 years in the past, but my friend, time marches on.

Cal: Nice cliché, Bob. Time may march on, but as I learned in high school band, the best marches are to the same drumbeat. The court has not only used different constitutional cadences, it has marched in different directions over the years. It was precisely because the Declaration of Independence — the philosophical underpinning of the Constitution — spoke of all being created equal that generations after the Founders, we can look back and be conformed to the standard they established, though failed to live up to.

Bob: No arguments on that point, Cal.

Cal: What the Founders established was principles. Did slaves who were counted as three-fifths of a person for tax purposes live in an "equal" society? No, but future generations — and future courts — could lean on the Founders' ideal of equality. The document they crafted outlived the failures of that time. You see, Bob, "original intent" — sticking to the intentions of the writers of the Constitution — does work.

Bob: Their original intent was not to make all people equal. Remember, Cal, these same Founders also decided that women were not equal — or women would have been voting well before the 20th century. I realize that the Founders were reflecting the times, norms and social order in which they lived, so it has been left to the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution to reflect the reality of the times. The debate is, does the court get the reality of the times right?

Cal: One of the astounding debates we're having with the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the court is about whether certain decisions of the recent past are "settled law." Bob, if every decision by the court were settled law, we would still be buying and selling African-Americans, and other minorities couldn't buy homes in white neighborhoods. The law has become unsettled because social engineers have used the Supreme Court to advance their narrow agendas. Law shouldn't be settled, unless it settles on an unchanging standard. And that's what is missing from modern court decisions. Bad decisions have been overturned in the past, and a nominee — such as Roberts — who believes bad law might be similarly overturned in the future should not have his confirmation denied.

Bob: But even a standard as obvious as equal protection for all citizens has had to be reinterpreted. In 1896, the Supreme Court issued the famous Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which ruled that black children and white children could be taught in separate but equal settings. It took until 1954, and Brown v. Board of Education, before the court ordered public schools integrated. Sometimes the court reflects the time at which rulings are issued, as it did in Plessy. If the public sway is wrong, though, the court must rule with a conscience. Justices must be able to relate to all the people, not just the familiar.

Cal: You have a point, Bob. As constitutional attorney John Whitehead noted in a recent essay, most justices are removed from the "common man." They are rich; they are highly educated at elite schools; and most come from privileged backgrounds that remove them from the real world. Drawing from such a small pool creates, in Whitehead's words, "a ruling aristocracy."

Bob: I don't know about the rich part, but that description fits most federal judges. What do you or Whitehead suggest we do about changing the types of people appointed to federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court?

Cal: We should consider non-lawyers for the court. Congress is dominated by lawyers, as is the Supreme Court. How many average citizens can identify with lawyers? Whitehead and I agree that there should be term limits for federal judges. It would take a lot of the fire out of the nominating process, too. While the president can only serve eight years, the newest member of the court, Stephen Breyer, has already been there 11 years. John Paul Stevens and William Rehnquist have served for about three decades.

Bob: I'm all for non-lawyers on the Supreme Court. We also have common ground on term limits. I've been for term limits for years and had no idea any thoughtful conservatives favored the idea. My idea is for federal judges from the district courts to the Supreme Court be confirmed for a 14-year term, with an extension for seven years, but only if the sitting president at the time renominated the judge seeking an extension. The judge would then have to be confirmed again by the Senate. What say you?

Cal: Works for me. I'm for recycling members of the federal government and trash for the same reason. Each left too long in one place begins to emit a foul odor.

Answer 7

This sure smells like a homework question. But I'll give you a hint: look up "separate but equal" on Google.