Thurgood Marshall
To some of us, Thurgood Marshall is the first black man ever to become Supreme Court Justice but to most Americans, he is more than that. His name today symbolizes complete equality and freedom, not only for blacks but also for every individual regardless of his color or race. To associate Marshall with law alone and to discuss his accomplishments in this context might be unfair to a person who devoted his whole life to the creation of a moral society where every individual is accorded equal rights and where color doesn't determine or plague civil rights. Thus Marshall was the man who taught us to value freedom and equality over 'heritage' or 'history'. He must therefore be remembered as a champion of civil rights and as someone who had the courage to reject rigid interpretations of law to create a better and more humane society for every individual.
Marshall…...
mla
References
Barbara A. Perry, A Representative Supreme Court? The Impact of Race, Religion and Gender on Appointments, Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1991.
J. Clay Smith Jr., Thurgood Marshall: fighting for a moral society. Magazine Title: Negro History Bulletin. Publication Date: January-December 2001. Page Number: 49+.
Juan Williams. Article Title: The Thurgood Marshall nobody knows; first Black Supreme Court Justice recalls his life on the front line of the civil rights issue. Magazine Title: Ebony. Volume: 45. Issue: 7. Publication Date: May 1990. Page Number: 68+.
Peter B. Levy, The Civil Rights Movement. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: 84.
Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas
Ever since Clarence Thomas, a conservative, replaced Thurgood Marshall, a liberal, on the United States Supreme Court in 1991, there has been constant comparison between the two African-American justices.
Just this past month, in June 2005, Thomas again drew attention and comparison to Marshall concerning two Supreme Court decisions. Thomas was one of three justices who disagreed when the Court stated that a Texas killer's rights were compromised when prosecutors removed all but one African-American from the jury.
In another case, the Court stopped California from making it harder for defendants to get their claims of racial bias in jury selection investigated, and Thomas, the Court's only black member, was the only justice to disagree with the ruling.
These cases were public reminders of Thomas' status as the Court's toughest critic of racial discrimination claims, and one of America's more enigmatic figures.
Although he grew up in the South during…...
mla
Novick, Sheldon M. 1992. A Unique Voice on the Court Thurgood Marshall
Demonstrated the Value of Simply Opening Doors. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. January 10. Available from HighBeam Research Library Web site. (accessed July 03, 2005).
Henderson, Stephen. 2005. Justice Thomas a strong critic of racial discrimination claims. Knight Ridder Washington Bureau. June 18. Available from HighBeam Research Library Web site. (accessed July 03, 2005).
people in American history. Specifically it will discuss the three most significant people in American History since 1865: George Washington Carver, Shirley Chisholm, and Thurgood Marshall, and tell why they are significant and how they affected the course of U.S. history. Each of these three individuals was extremely important to American history. Black, driven, and significant, they helped change the course of education and agriculture, politics, and criminal justice, and they live on today as heroes of the Black community. They show that anyone can make a difference in American society, and that hard work and dedication really do pay off, for individuals, and for society.
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother and father were both Caribbean, and moved to New York a few years before Chisholm was born. She was the oldest of three daughters. Her mother, uby,…...
mla
References
Haskins, James. Distinguished African-American Political and Governmental Leaders. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1999.
Kessler, James H., et al. Distinguished African-American Scientists of the 20th Century. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1996.
Building Security Evaluation: Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport
Just a couple of decades ago, travelers, visitors and virtually anyone else could walk freely through the nation's airports without being challenged at any point, and security considerations were generally restricted to concerns over possible so-called "skyjackings" to Cuba, but even these were rare. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, though, all of this changed in fundamental ways as airports across the country implemented a wide range of security measures intended to prevent a recurrence of these deadly security breaches. Indeed, today, security at the nation's airports has never been stricter, and despite the time and trouble these initiatives have created for air travelers, most passengers today appear to accept these measures in stride as part of the post-September 11 climate. To determine what security measures have been taken in a specific airport facility, this paper provides an evaluation of building…...
Ramstack, T. & Lively, T. (2004, January 7). BWI airport police search entering cars; action taken as a Code Orange precaution. The Washington Times, C08.
Wallis, R. (2003). How safe are our skies? Assessing the airlines' response to terrorism. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Ferguson required that the decision of the lower court be affirmed. The Court agreed with Mr. Sweatt. While the University of Texas School of Law "may properly be considered one of the nation's ranking law schools," Justice Vinson wrote for the Court, such could not be said for either version of the law school for African-American students (d. At 633). "n terms of number of the faculty, variety of courses and opportunity for specialization, size of the student body, scope of the library, availability of law review and similar activities, the University of Texas Law School is superior, " noted the Court (d. At 633-634). Moreover, Justice Vinson continued, in no way could the new institution compare with the University of Texas School of law in terms of more intangible measures, either (d. At 634).
Although the decision in Sweatt was a vitally important step in the creation of justice…...
mla
It was amid this turmoil that the U.S. Supreme Court then issued its decision in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 377 U.S. 218 (1964), or, as the case is colloquially known, Brown II. Faced with the problems and impediments to integration created by Senator Byrd's "massive resistance" campaign in Virginia, the Court made it the responsibility of the U.S. District Courts to implement school desegregation and ordered that they do so "with all deliberate speed." (Id. At 234).
Few today can argue the correctness of the Court's decision in Brown v. Board, or the case that came before it, and upon which it so heavily relied, Sweatt v. Painter. Few cases exist, moreover, that were of greater importance, and so directly affected the lives of so many.
Ultimately, the State did open the Texas State University for Negroes in Houston with "a faculty of five full-time professors; a student body of 23; a library of some 16,500 volumes serviced by a full-time staff; a practice court and legal aid association" (Id. At 633). This law school, at Texas Southern University, is today named the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.
Ethics of the Death Penalty
The death penalty is a majorly decisive issue. Some countries feel that it is a cruel punishment and have outlawed it, such as England. Others practice the punishment liberally with small caliber crimes receiving the harshest possible punishment. In the United States of America, the death penalty exists in some states but has been abolished in others. Crimes that qualify for the death penalty are serious felonies such as murder. Those on opposing sides of the issue often look to the philosophy of ethics to prove their own position or to subvert the opposition's perspective. Often those who support the death penalty argue that this is the only just punishment for someone who has committed heinous crimes against other people. The dignity of the victim is the only one they consider. Antithetically, those who oppose the death penalty argue that committing a crime like that should…...
mla
Works Cited
Bedau, H.A. (2004). The death penalty in America, yesterday and today. Killing as Punishment:
Reflections on the Death Penalty in America. Northwestern UP: Boston, MA. 3-15.
Kant, I. (1972). Justice and punishment. Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment. Ed. G.
Ezorsky. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY. 103-106.
GM 1983 Discrimination suit
G.M. And acial Discrimination
The civil rights movement in the United States began slowly. Changing centuries of discriminatory practices across an entire country was not a task that was without opposition, and ignorance on the part of the average citizen. However, when that ignorance was institutionalized within businesses, the wheels of justice needed a significant push in order to begin to afford black American access to the same opportunities which Caucasian-Americans enjoyed. Toward this end, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission actively sought out target candidates which would have the largest impact on moving the civil rights agenda forward.
In 1973, a suit filed against the worlds largest automaker, General Motors, the EEOC alleged that the corporation actively discriminated against black, Hispanic and women workers. At the time of the suit's filing, the company had 6.4% of its journeymen (skilled labor) positions filled by minority workers. Under terms of the…...
mla
Resources:
Agence France Presse. Minority workers sue General Motors for 7.4 billion dollars
However, Justice Vinson went further, adding his historical comments to Gaines by saying that the Fourteenth Amendment rights were "personal' which meant that "it is no answer... To say that the courts may also be induced to deny white persons rights of ownership and occupancy on the grounds of race or color."
In Missouri, the state where Gaines had sought to attend law school, his case was significant in that the undergraduate college he attended, Lincoln, seized the opportunity to use the Missouri law and grant money set aside to educate black graduate students, to create a black law school in St. Louis. Less than a year after the Gaines decision had been handed down by the Supreme Court, some thirty students enrolled in the St. Louis law school that had been created for black law students as a result of the Gaines case.
In the years that followed the Gaines decision,…...
Mississippi is fortunate in having men at its leadership who have vowed to prevent integration of our schools. The very sovereignty of our state is threatened'."
Most whites in the state opposed Meredith's admission, and the Governor of the state vowed not to allow Meredith to enter the school, or segregate other schools. A reporter notes, "The following day Barnett spoke on the air, saying, 'No schools will be integrated while I am your governor.' Calling Meredith's admission 'Our greatest crisis since the War Between the States,' Barnett said that the federal government was 'employing naked and arbitrary power'."
In fact, even after the courts assured Meredith he could enroll; Governor Barnett met him on the steps of the school and denied him admission. Meredith did finally attend the University for a year, and graduated in 1963 with a law degree.
Of course, his year at Ole Miss was not without trials.…...
mla
References
Editors. 2007. About James Meredith. Jackson, MI: Online. Available from Internet, ttp:/ / www.jamesmeredithbooks.com/about.html. accessed 16 April 2007.
Fisk, Candace D., and Beth Hurst. "James Meredith at Ole Miss: 'Victory over Discrimination'." Social Education 68, no. 6 (2004): 418+.
Levy, Peter B. The Civil Rights Movement. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Mazama, Ama. "Paul Hendrickson. Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy." African-American Review 37, no. 4 (2003): 662+.
165). On page 166 Bannister points out that outside of China, the numbers show a decrease in individuals being put to death through capital punishment. In 2006, the number of reported executions dropped to 1591 from 2148 in 2005; also, since 1996 more than 30 nations have "put an end to this cruel and inhuman practice" (Bannister, 170).
Conclusion
The Chief Editor of Criminal Law Review, Chen Xingliang, writes that there is a consensus among the scholars that contribute to his publication; and those scholars "…are in favor of strict limitations on the death penalty in order to eventually abolish it" (p. 41). However, Xingliang admits that the "public understanding of the death penalty is quite different fro that of these scholars" (p. 42). That is because the "public support for the death penalty is formed with an irrational understanding and thus should not be a justified factor considered for legislation,"…...
mla
Works Cited
Center for Individual Freedom. (2007). Death Penalty Deters Future Murders, According to Remarkable New Empirical Study. Retrieved Dec. 1, 2010, from http://www.cfif.org .
Bannister, Piers. (2008). The death penalty: UN victory puts total abolition within our grasp.
International Review of Law Computers & Technology, 22(1-2), 165-170.
DeathPenalty.com (2010). Does the death penalty deter crime? Retrieved Dec. 1, 2010, from (Muhlhausen, ACLU, Bert, Reno, Borg, Van Den Haag).http://deathpenalty.procon.org .
Adds Tindall and Shi (1242-1242), the Court cited current sociological and psychological findings that were presented by Kenneth Clark, a noted black psychologist. "It might as well have cited historical evidence that Jim Crow facilities had been seldom equal and often not available to blacks at all." A year later, the Court further directed "a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance" where the process should move "with all deliberate speed." The white South's first response was "relatively calm," says Tindall & Shi 1243). "Eisenhower refused to take any part in leading white southerners toward compliance. Privately he remarked: 'I am convinced that the Supreme Court decision set back progress in the South at least fifteen years. The fellow tries to tell me that you can do these things by force is just plain nuts'" (1243).
In the early 1960s, blacks rebelled throughout the South, and in the late 1960s they…...
mla
Books Cited
Johnson, Paul. History of the American People. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Tindall, George Brown and Shi, David. America. A Narrative History. New York:
Norton, 1984.
Zinn, Hoard. People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Collins, 1999.
Criminological Event
acism has always been a defining feature of the American criminal justice system, including racial profiling, disparities in arrests convictions and sentencing between minorities and whites, and in the use of the death penalty. acial profiling against blacks, immigrants and minorities has always existed in the American criminal justice system, as has the belief that minorities in general and blacks in particular are always more likely to commit crimes. American society and its legal system were founded on white supremacy going back to the colonial period, and critical race criminology would always consider these historical factors as well as the legal means to counter them. From the 17th Century onward, Black Codes and slave patrols were used to control the black population, and keep them confined to farms and plantations. Blacks did not have the right to trial by jury or to testify against whites, and the law punished…...
mla
REFERENCES
Capital Punishment (2011). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Cooper, S. (2006). "A Closer Look at Racial Profiling" in S.J. Muffler (ed). Racial Profiling: Issues, Data and Analyses. Nova Science Publishers, pp. 25-30.
Garland, D. (2010). Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Harvard University Press.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the United States Supreme Court upheld racial segregation of passengers in railroad coaches as required by Louisiana law. Three years later the Supreme Court was asked to review its first school case dealing with equal treatment of school children. In Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899) the court found that the temporary cessation of services for minority high-school children did not violate equal protection even though services continued at the high-school for Caucasian children. The Court reasoned that the closing of the school was based on economic considerations, and was not found to represent bad faith or an abuse of discretion. The court concluded that although all must share the burdens and receive the benefits of taxation, school finance was a matter belonging to the states and federal interference without a clear and unmistakable disregard for constitutional…...
"Brown v. Board of Education - 1954,1955." United States Courts. The History of Brown v. Board of Education. 2011. 14 June 2011.
Cambron- McCabe, Nelda H., Martha M. McCarthy, and Stephen B. Thomas. Public School Law: Teacher's and Student's Rights. 5th Ed. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc., 2004.
Meador, Derrick. "Brown v. Board of Education Summary." About.com. Teaching. New York Times Company. (2011). 16 June 2011.
4th Amendment's evolution and history, together with the "search and seizure" law.
4th Amendment Background
People's rights of being secure in personal effects, papers, houses and persons, against unreasonable seizures and searches, may not be breached, nor shall any warrants be issued, but in case of probable cause, which is supported by affirmation or oath, and describes, particularly, the place that must be searched, or the things or individuals that should be seized, under the 4th Amendment. Like most fields in U.S. law, the English common law forms the principal basis of the 4th Amendment. Broadly, it was created for limiting governmental powers and their capacity of enforcing legal actions upon citizens (4th Amendment - constitution -- Laws.com). Amendment IV was implemented in immediate reaction to the historical writ of assistance's abuse. This writ was a sort of general governmental search warrant employed in the American evolution's era. Amendment IV was…...
(n.d.). Arizona Defense Attorney James E. Novak Law Blog -- Legal discussions and observations with Arizona Criminal Defense Attorney James E. Novak. Requirements and Exceptions to Lawful Search Warrants in Arizona -- Legal discussions and observations with Arizona Criminal Defense Attorney James E. Novak. Retrieved April 26, 2016, from http://blog.novakazlaw.com/2013/01/requirements-and-exceptions-to-lawful-search-warrants-in-arizona/
upport for this contention comes from the observation that male offenders too are comparatively lightly punished when domestic abuse is involved.
Other factors, however, indicate greater complexity. treib (1990), for instance, showed that confounding factors for deserving the death sentence include the offender's prior record for committing crimes; premeditation of the crime; and her potential for future violent crimes. Women are less likely to represent or possess these characteristics than men and, therefore, subsequently are figured less often on Death Row.
However, it is also very likely that simple sexism plays a part. This is particularly likely when it is seen that those tending more towards the death penalty - i.e. more conservative, Republican, white-male dominated groups -- are also less strongly against women receiving this penalty. In fact, these groups have sometimes even prominently militated against women receiving the death sentence, as was the case with Pat Robertson and the…...
mla
Sources
Baker, David V. (1999). A Descriptive Profile and Socio-Historical Analysis of Female Executions in the United States: 1632- 1997, Women and Criminal Justice 57
Bakken, G.M. (2010). Invitation to an Execution: A History of the Death Penalty in the United States. USA:University of New Mexico Press
Banner, Stuart (2002). The Death Penalty: An American History. Harvard University Press
Crocker, P. (2001), Is the Death Penalty Good for Women, Buffalo Criminal Law Review 917
Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library
of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
