Equal Protection and Race: U.S. Supreme Court History
This paper examines the United States Supreme Court's evolving role in racial equal protection from the antebellum era through the early twenty-first century. Beginning with the Dred Scott decision and moving through the Civil War amendments, Reconstruction-era rulings, the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, and the landmark desegregation holding in Brown v. Board of Education, the paper traces how the Court alternately advanced and undermined racial equality. It also analyzes the development of strict scrutiny under Carolene Products, the internment ruling in Korematsu, and modern affirmative action disputes in Bakke, Grutter, and Gratz, concluding that incomplete progress leaves minority groups vulnerable to ongoing discrimination.
- Introduction: The Supreme Court and Race Relations: Court's pivotal and contradictory role in race relations
- Dred Scott and the Pre-Civil War Era: Dred Scott ruling invalidates Congress's limits on slavery
- The Civil War Amendments and Reconstruction: Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth Amendments and early enforcement
- From Reconstruction to Plessy v. Ferguson: Court upholds segregation and erodes Reconstruction protections
- Strict Scrutiny, Brown v. Board, and the Civil Rights Era: Brown overturns separate but equal; strict scrutiny emerges
- Affirmative Action and Modern Equal Protection Challenges: Bakke, Grutter, and Gratz complicate affirmative action law
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper builds a clear chronological argument, showing how the Supreme Court's equal protection jurisprudence evolved — and at times regressed — across nearly 150 years of American history.
- Primary sources are used extensively and quoted directly, with precise case citations that ground every analytical claim in authoritative legal text.
- The paper balances majority opinions with dissenting views (particularly Justice Harlan's repeated dissents), giving the reader a sense of ongoing internal debate within the Court itself.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective doctrinal legal analysis: it isolates the holding of each case, situates it within the broader constitutional framework, and traces how precedents build on or contradict one another. The use of long direct quotations from Court opinions is paired with concise analytical commentary, showing students how to integrate primary legal sources rather than merely summarizing them.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis framing the Court's pivotal and contradictory role in race relations. It then moves chronologically: pre–Civil War slavery rulings, the Civil War amendments and early Reconstruction cases, the collapse of Reconstruction-era protections and the rise of "separate but equal," the twentieth-century shift toward strict scrutiny and desegregation, and finally the modern affirmative action debate. The conclusion returns to the thesis, arguing that incomplete progress still exposes minorities to structural disadvantage.
Introduction: The Supreme Court and Race Relations
The Supreme Court has played a pivotal role in race relations in the United States. It began by supporting the institution of slavery, going so far as to invalidate an act of Congress that intended to limit the spread of slavery in the country. The Court's support of racial oppression did not end with the end of slavery. On the contrary, even after the conclusion of the Civil War, when the laws clearly supported the equality of the races, the Supreme Court's decisions did not always uphold equal protection. However, by the time of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the Court had begun to take an activist role in civil rights, which may be the only reason that any meaningful advances in civil rights and race relations have occurred.
Dred Scott and the Pre-Civil War Era
In Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), the Court was asked to adjudicate a dispute between a slave and a person claiming to be his owner. The subject matter of the dispute was whether a slave taken into free territory became a free man. The larger overall question was the validity of the Missouri Compromise and whether Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in any area of the United States. The Court determined that Congress did not have that power, and bolstered its argument by looking to the historical intent and powers of the Articles of Confederation — though those had clearly and unequivocally been superseded by the Constitution. The Court held that Congress's right to enact new laws was restricted to property held in common by the states at the time of the Articles of Confederation, rather than any after-acquired territory or property (60 U.S. 393, 436).
While the Court recognized Congress's ability to acquire territory, it did not recognize its ability to govern that territory. Therefore, it determined that the provisions of the Missouri Compromise were void, so that Dred Scott and his family remained enslaved, despite the time they spent in free territory or a free state. The Court interpreted equal protection as applying to the slaveholder, so that he could not be deprived of his property — the slaves — merely by taking them into free territory. Furthermore, there was no recognition of Dred Scott as a human being entitled to any rights, much less equal protection of the law; he was regarded as nothing more than chattel. This decision was clearly a stretch, meant to defeat Congress's attempts to limit the spread of slavery in the United States, and was one of the precipitating events leading up to the Civil War.
Though the broader issue of the Civil War was the argument between state and federal rights, the practical issue at its heart was slavery and the economic tug-of-war between free states and slave states. Moral revulsion at the practice of slavery came much later for many people in free states; their free status was the result of economic power that did not depend on the availability of a cheap labor force.
The Civil War Amendments and Reconstruction
While Lincoln abolished slavery in the Confederate States during the war through the Emancipation Proclamation, the conclusion of the war saw the abolition of slavery throughout the United States and the passage of three significant amendments to the United States Constitution. The first of those amendments, the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawed race-based slavery in the United States. It stated that: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (U.S. Const. amend. XIII).
The Fourteenth Amendment went further, proclaiming that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (U.S. Const. amend. XIV). Congress thus clearly intended to grant equal protection to people regardless of race. Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African-Americans the right to vote, stating that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." (U.S. Const. amend. XV).
In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, 18 Stat. Part III, p. 335 (Act of Mar. 1, 1875), made clear that equal protection extended beyond the law itself, entitling "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States...to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement." (18 Stat. Part III, p. 335, Chapter 114, §1). Furthermore, the Act provided for penalties for violators, including imprisonment and fines (18 Stat. Part III, p. 335, Chapter 114, §2). Taken together, the Act and the Civil War amendments make clear that Congress intended for all Americans — at least the males — to enjoy the equal protection of the laws. However, once Reconstruction ended, the Court failed to give teeth to these powerful protections.
References
Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954).
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Civil Rights Act of 1875, 18 Stat. Part III, p. 335 (Act of Mar. 1, 1875).
Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).
Slaughter House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873).
Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880).
United States v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
U.S. Const. amend. XIII.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV.
U.S. Const. amend. XV.
Wormser, Richard. "Civil Rights Act of 1875 Declared Unconstitutional." The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. 2002. PBS. 4 Apr. 2008. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_uncivil.html.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).
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