Rules of Law Established in

¶ … rules of law established in the following cases: The Slaughterhouse Cases and the Civil Rights Cases. What legal rights did the United States Supreme Court recognize in these cases? In your analysis be sure to include the relevant facts, issues, arguments, and reasons discussed in each case. Do you agree or disagree with the outcome of these cases? The Slaughterhouse Cases and the Civil Rights cases, resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873 and 1883, respectively, are important cases in U.S. legal history, but both have proved controversial.

The Slaughterhouse issue began in New Orleans over the filth and dirt in the city and the state attempts to enforce hygienic procedures. In 1869, the Louisiana legislature passed a law "to protect the health of the City of New Orleans" (Ross, 1998, p. 653). The law also granted a virtual monopoly to the Crescent City Livestock Landing & Slaughterhouse Company to slaughter animals in the vicinity.

The legislative decision in exchange required that the Crescent City Company complied with the state provisions governing the hygienic procedures in the vicinity, including the "quality of facilities and products, output volume, and price of livestock" (the Slaughterhouse Cases, n.d.). The company was also obliged to allow independent butchers to work in the Company's facilities at a set rate. The butchers were not allowed to own independent slaughterhouses.

Angered by the new law, a group of butchers in New Orleans sued Louisiana in a state court, claiming that their right to "privileges and immunities" clause had been violated. The state courts decided that the Slaughterhouse Act was constitutional. The Butchers in response took the case to the Supreme Court which resolved it in 1873. The Supreme Court ruling, written by Justice Samuel Taylor Miller, stated that the law did not violate the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment empowered the Federal government to overrule state violation of rights belonging to American citizenship, but not to state citizenship. The ruling also stated that the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination based on "the slave race" but "did not guarantee that all citizens, regardless of their race, should receive equal economic privileges by the state" (Slaughterhouse Cases). The Crescent City Company was allowed to continue its operations as mandated by the Louisiana law.

The Civil Rights Cases involved five similar cases initially resolved by state courts. All five cases involved some form of institutionalized discrimination against African-Americans and were then reviewed by the Supreme Court in 1883. The Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government lacked constitutional authority, mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment, to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations. The court ruling stated that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional.

The decision was challenged by the Justice Harman as a narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the Court nevertheless with overwhelming majority ruled that neither the Thirteenth nor the Fourteenth Amendment granted the Federal state jurisdiction over these five cases. "This ruling," as argued by some scholars, "practically put an end to the federal government's attempt to enforce the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment" (Barnes and Connolly, 1999, p. 338). In both cases, the U.S.

Supreme Court recognized the rights of individual states that narrowly defined the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Louisiana State protected a monopoly power to the detriment of individual workers. The Supreme Court could have ruled that the "privileges and immunities" clause empowered the Federal government to protect citizens from the infringement by state governments. "By declining to do so," as Ross (1998) argued, "the Court left to southern state governments the responsibility of.