Loving v. Virginia: Trial, Appeal, and Civil Rights Context

Understanding Trials and Appeals

In law, a trial is the event in which two or more parties meet to present evidence to an authority regarding a dispute. In the contemporary world, this is most often a meeting of opposing sides before a judge or judge and jury who will hear the merits of the case and then form an opinion based on legal precedents. An appeal is a formal process in which one or the other party in a case requests a change to an official decision. An appeal is complex; it can be based on different or new evidence, an assertion that the legal process was not followed, or the presence of extenuating circumstances involved in the original trial.

Typically, prior to a new trial, an appellate court reviews the motion, reviews the trial record, and rules on whether points of law were followed or if there are reasons that were disallowed—or new reasons—that might change the outcome of the trial. Courts of appeal are typically staffed with an odd number of judges so that it takes a majority ruling (two out of three, at minimum) to make a new decision. The theory is that there will be no split decisions that will confuse legal precedent. The highest appellate court in the United States is the Supreme Court, and often judges must recuse themselves for various reasons, which could result in a tie. The court then has the option of letting the lower court ruling stand or hearing the case again.

In Loving v. Virginia, the state of Virginia ignored U.S. Supreme Court precedent and cited the authority of Virginia Supreme Court's own decision in a 1955 case, Naim v. Naim. Virginia also argued that its decision to uphold the case was not a Fourteenth Amendment violation since both white and non-white individuals in the case were punished equally under the state's miscegenation statute. The Supreme Court, however, noted that precedent in these cases dated back to the late 1800s and that under two clauses—Due Process and Equal Protection—Virginia's anti-miscegenation statutes actually violated federal law. The Court found that these statutes were racist, perpetuated white supremacy, and were unenforceable.

Virginia's Defense and the Supreme Court's Ruling

Interestingly, though, until 2000, these laws were kept on the books of individual states. Even after Loving was decided in 1967, they were rarely used (Loving v. Virginia, 1967).

One cannot know the Lovings' exact reasons for waiting to appeal the Virginia court's judgment, other than that the political and social climate of the time changed dramatically from the original plea in January 1959 and the ACLU's appeal of the court in November 1963. In this short period, more and more civil rights activities came to the forefront. The political climate shifted from the Eisenhower administration to the optimism of the Kennedy–Johnson years. People became more vocal about civil issues during the Vietnam conflict, and the mass media (television, in particular) became far more active and plentiful for the general public. Finally, due process and the rights of defendants became more of a focus of the Warren Court between 1963 and 1966. Perhaps the ACLU and other interested parties felt that it was a better time to have a sympathetic hearing than would have been possible in 1959–1960.