Week Four: The Slaughterhouse Cases
The latest Our American Values series focuses on the US Supreme Court and the role it has played in the struggle for civil rights. This new series has three parts. First, we look at two cases that established the principle of judicial review of actions by federal (1803) and state (1817) government. Second, we look at a series of Supreme Court cases decided between 1857 and 1944. These cases made it easier for governments to deny individuals their rights and so each made the moral arc of the universe a little longer. Finally, we look at a series of cases decided between 1886 and 1983 that moved America forward toward justice. For this new series, we draw on some very short (thirty second to four-minute videos) from C-SPAN Classroom.
In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the Supreme Court interpreted the three “Reconstruction Amendments” (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) for the first time. The plaintiffs were butchers challenging a monopoly on slaughterhouse operation in New Orleans that the Louisiana legislature had granted to the Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughtering Company. The Louisiana law granting the monopoly was upheld by the Court 5-4 with a majority opinion that interpreted the 14th Amendment so narrowly as to effectively negate the clause of the 14th Amendment that most explicitly empowered the federal courts to protect the rights of individual Americans against usurpation by state and local government. In so doing, the Court facilitated a rollback of voting rights for African Americans and opened the door wide to nearly 100-years of “Jim Crow” law. Like Scott vs. Sanford, this was a case that set back the cause of justice and made the arc of the moral universe that much longer. For the most complete view of the Slaughterhouse Cases, play all seven brief videos from C-SPAN Classroom at the link below. To go directly to the heart of the case, the decision, and its impact, play videos four through seven — these have a combined run time of a little less than ten minutes.