Gale Encyclopedia Of American Law 3Rd Edition Volume 1 P50 ppt

establishments; in job opportunities, raises, and promotions; and in the use of pub l ic schools (Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241). While the Freedom Riders traveled across the South, SNCC also pursued voter registra- tion. In 1963 Baker went to Mississippi to help with the Freedom Vote, a project of CORE and SNCC. The Freedom Vote was a mock election intended to demonstrate that, contrary to the opinions held by many white southerners, blacks were interested in voting. Baker assisted the project by speaking at rallies, setting up polling places, and collecting and counting the ballots on voting day. The Freedom Vote was a big success: More than 80,000 of the 90,000 people who cast ballots that day were black, even though only around 20,000 blacks were registered for real elections. Two years later, in August 1965, the efforts of Baker and thousands of other activists bore fruit when the Voting Rights Act (Pub. L. No. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437) was passed. The Voting Rights Act nearly eliminated one of the last ways that had been used to prevent African Americans from voting—the literacy test—by prohibiting its use in states where fewer than 50 percent of eligible voters were registered. In 1964 Baker again helped organize a civil rights group. The group was the Mississippi Freedom DEMOCRATIC PARTY (MFDP), begun in response to an established political party, the Mississippi Democratic party. The MFDP attempted to represent the state of Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by claiming that, as an interracial group, it was better able to do so than the all-white Mississippi Democratic party. HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, vice PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES , and Walter F. Mondale, Minnesota attorney general, suggested a compromise: Two MFDP members could be named as delegates to the convention, but would not be part of Mississippi’s delegation. The MFDP refused this offer, but its request was the catalyst for a new rule passed by the national Demo- cratic party, that all state delegations would have to be racially mixed. After achieving notable successes in the U.S. civil rights movement, Baker continued to serve as SNCC’s mentor as the organization became involved in protests against the VIETNAM WAR,and as an advocate for the free speech movement and women’s rights. She also worked toward increased civil rights for blacks in other countries, including the former Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe; South Africa; and Puerto Rico. Baker died in New York City on December 13, 1986, her eighty-third birthday. By that time, some of the organizations she had been involved with no longer existed. SNCC fell apart after dissension developed over black power, or black indepen- dence from white America. The MFDP lasted through the 1967 elections, winning offices in local races, but was no longer needed after African Americans were allowed to join the state Demo- cratic party. Baker’s work, however, lives on in a generation of black U.S. leaders she nurtured and encouraged, who are able to carry on the struggle for civil and HUMAN RIGHTS worldwide. FURTHER READINGS Collins, Gail. 2007. “The Women behind the Men.” The New York Times (September 22). Available online at http:// www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/opinion/22collins.html? _r=1&em&ex=1190606400&en=a20518e610336452&ei= 5087%0A; website home page: http://www.nytimes.com (accessed August 28, 2009). Dallard, Shyrlee, and Andrew Young. 1990. Ella Baker: A Leader behind the Scenes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett. Ransby, Barbara. 2003. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. CROSS REFERENCES School Desegregation; Voting. BAKER V. CARR The ideal of ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE motivated the founders of the United States of America to establish a census when they drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Although that ideal has not yet been fully realized—because the census still undercounts racial and ethnic minorities, among others—the country took a giant step closer to equal representation for every citizen nearly two centuries later, during the era of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT . On March 26, 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S. Ct. 691, 7 L. Ed. 2d 663 (1962), that state legislative APPORTIONMENT cases could be reviewed by the federal courts. As a result, lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the apportion- ment of legislative districts were filed in many states. In a ruling that Chief Justice EARL WARREN later called the mostimportant of his tenure on the Court, Justice WILLIAM J. BRENNAN JR.wrote: “Acitizen’s right to vote free of arbitrary impair- ment by state action has been judicially recog- nized as a right secured by the Constitution.” GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 478 BAKER V. CARR Also significant because it examined the notion of “political questions” and whether courts could address them, the Baker v. Carr case became a springboard for future appor- tionment lawsuits. In June 1964, the Supreme Court ruled on appeals from 15 states that had used Baker as a PRECEDENT, holding that both houses of a state legislature must be appo r- tioned substantially on the basis of population. Within two years, every state had taken some type of apportionment action. By the late 1960s, congressional districts around the country had been redrawn to meet the Supreme Court’s call for equal representation, and after the 1970 census, underrepresented urban areas were finally given an equal voice in Congress. Every decade since 1790, U.S. citizens have complied with the Constitution and counted themselves. Whereas on its simplest level the census is a means to document historical changes in the U.S. population, it also deter- mines how federal funds, power, political clout, and representation are divided, or apportioned, among the people of the United States. The notion of representation, more specifically equal representation, compelled Charles W. Baker and other qualified voters in Tenn essee to bring a lawsuit against Tennessee’s SECRETARY OF STATE Joe C. Carr, on the grounds that the state’s 1901 apportionment statute (Acts Tenn. 1901, c. 122) violated the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT of the Constitution. The plaintiffs argued that Ten- nessee’s method of unequally apportioning the members of the general assembly among the state’s 95 counties unconstitutionally deprived people in the state of EQUAL PROTECTION of the laws and was obsolete because of a significant growth and population shift since 190 0. The plaintiffs’ first round in court brought failure when a three-judge panel of the U.S. district court for the Middle District of Tennes- see dismissed their complaint on December 21, 1959 (Baker, 179 F. Supp. 824). The panel dismissed the complaint on two grounds: (1) that the court lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter because it was a POLITICAL QUESTION and (2) that the complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The plaintiffs appealed, and on November 21, 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it had probable jurisdiction in the matter. This State Legislative Apportionment Before Baker v. Carr a a Nebraska has a unicameral legislature (only one legislative chamber), and, therefore, is not represented on this graph. Nebraska's legislature was apportioned by population. SOURCE: Gordon E. Baker, State Constitutions: Rea pp ortionment ( New York: National Munici p al Lea g ue, 1960 ) , 5. Equal apportionment for each unit 1 state Fixed constitutional apportionment 1 state Population only 12 states a Combination of population and area 28 states Population, but with weighted ratios 7 states Houses Fixed constitutional apportionment 4 states Apportionment by taxation 1 state Population, but with weighted ratios 1 state Population only 19 states a Combination of population and area 17 states Equal apportionment for each unit 7 states Senates ILLUSTRATION BY GGS CREATIVE RESOURCES. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF GALE, A PART OF CENGAGE LEARNING. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION BAKER V. CARR 479 decision was significant because before the Supreme Court heard the Baker case, courts had abstained from addressing apportionment issues because they were considered political in nature. In the 1946 Supreme Court case Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 66 S. Ct. 1198, 90 L. Ed. 1432 (1946), Justice FELIX FRANKFURTER called apportionment a “political thicket” into which the judiciary should not venture. The subsequent ruling in Baker chan- ged that interpretatio n, stating that federal courts possessed jurisdiction of the subject, that the citizens in Tennessee were entitled to relief, and that the federal district court in the state could settle the challenge to the apportionment statute of Tennessee. In addressing the concern of some of his fellow Supreme Court justices who warned that the matter before them was a political question and therefore not appropriately dealt with in a court of law, Justice Brennan carefully wrote—and rewrote, ten times—his opinion in the 1962 decision. Brennan stated: “The mere fact that the suit seeks protection of a political right does not mean it presents a political question. Such an objection is little more than a play upon words.” He added that the plaintiffs’ complaint did present a JUSTICIABLE constitution- al CAUSE OF ACTION and that the Fourteenth Amendment did provide judicial protection to the right asserted. Justices Frankfurter and JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN dissented, stating that Brennan should not inject the Court “into the clash of political forces and political settlements.” The Court’s 6-2 ruling in favor of the plaintiffs forced state legislatures to reapportion their seats to reflect population shifts before the elections that were to occur in the fall of 1962. It also decreed one person, one vote as part of the United States’ constitutional heritage and opened the door to challenging state voting procedures and malapportionment on constitu- tional grounds. In his book Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age, former president JIMMY CARTER described how revolu- tionary the Baker decision was in the 1960s and how it transformed state politics, especially southern politics. Carter wrote that the Georgia state government, like many others, proposed a number of stalling ploys, fake reapportionment plans, and other ways to avoid the shift in political power that the one-person, one-vote ruling had been designed to cause. “The beneficiaries of the [old] system were the ones now charged with changing it,” he wrote. “At the same time, they woul d be reducing drastically the relative voting strength of their own constituents. It was understandable that [they] would do everything possible to circum- vent or postpone the effect of the court’s mandate.” Federal judges rejected the bogus plans, however, and by late summer 1962, the state’s political process had been thrown wide open. Incumbent politicians were suddenly without districts, and new seats had opened up. In these circumstances, a few weeks before the election, Carter decided to run for the Georgia State Senate. FURTHER READINGS Charles, Guy-Uriel E. 2002. “Constitutional Pluralism and Democratic Politics: Reflections on the Interpretive Approach of Baker and Carr.” North Carolina Law Review 80 (May). “A Final Victory Marks the End of a Career.” 1990. National Law Journal (August 13). Fuentes-Rohwer, Luis. 2002. “Baker’s Promise, Equal Protection, and the Modern Redistricting Revolution: A Plea for Rationality.” North Carolina Law Review 80 (May). “Koohi v. United States.” 1993. Georgia Law Review 28 (fall). Pushaw, Robert J., Jr. 2001. “Bush v. Gore: Looking at Baker v. Carr in a Conservative Mirror.” Constitutional Commentary 18 (summer). Richie, Robert, and Steven Hill. 1999. Reflecting All of Us: The Case of Proportional Representation. Boston: Beacon. Rush, Mark E. 1993. Does Redistricting Make a Difference? Partisan Representation and Electoral Behavior. Balti- more: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. “Some Implications of Arrow’s Theorem for Voting Rights.” 1995. Stanford Law Review 47 (January). “The Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs v. Yamasaki: The Application of the Political Question Doctrine to Hawaii’s Public Land Trust Dispute.” 1988. University of Hawaii Law Review 10 (winter). “United States v. Alvarez-Machain: Waltzing with the Political Question Doctrine.” 1994. Connecticut Law Review 26 (winter). “U.S. Supreme Court.” 1990. National Law Journal (June 4). “When Restraint Requires Activism.” 1990. Stanford Law Review 42 (July). CROSS REFERENCES Apportionment; Brennan, William Joseph, Jr.; Equal Protection; Failure to State a Claim; Fourteenth Amend- ment; Frankfurter, Felix; Political Question; Reynolds v. Sims; Voting. BAKKE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE See REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA V. BAKKE. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 480 BAKKE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE BALANCE SHEET A comprehensive financial stat ement that is a summarized assessment of a company’s accounts specifying its assets and liabilities. A report, usually prepared by independent auditors or accountants, which includes a full and complete statement of all receipts and disbursements of a particular business. A review that shows a general balance or summation of all accounts without showing the particular items that make up the several accounts. BALANCING A process sometimes used by state and federal courts in deciding between the competing interests represented in a case. Used frequently to decide constitutional cases, balancing is one of two main legal decision-making methods, the other being categorization or STRICT CONSTRUCTION. Balancing involves weighing competing rights against each other and analyzing the relative strength s of many factors. A balancing decision is dependent upon the circumstances of each case. Therefore, the outcome is difficult to predict. By contrast, categorization is a classification and labeling process. It involves identifying a right and how it was infringed upon and analogizing these findings to a previously decided case or PRECE- DENT . Hence, the outcome is more predictable. Balancing of Competing Interests in the U.S. Supreme Court Balancing may take one of two forms in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the first, the Court may measure competing interests against each other and determine which carries the most weight. For example, in New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 102 S. Ct. 3348, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1113 (1982), the Court upheld a statute criminalizing distribution of CHILD PORNOGRAPHY because the evil eliminated by the statute far outweighed any infringement on free speech interests. In the second form of balancing, the Court attempts to “strike a balance” between competing interests. Thus, in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 105 S. Ct. 1694, 85 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1985), the Court held that a police officer may use DEADLY FORCE to stop a fleeing felon if the officer has PROBABLE CAUSE to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm to others. In Garner, the Court did not find that one interest clearly outweighed the other. Instead, both the state’s interest in law enforce- ment and the individual’s interest in being free from harm were weighed in the analysis and given due recognition. Balancing was first used by the U.S. Supreme Court as one of its principal modes of judicial analysis in the late 1930s and early 1940s when the judiciary began to reject the rigid formalism and mechanical JURISPRUDENCE characteristic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before the balancing era began in earnest with LOCHNER V. NEW YORK, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S. Ct. 539, 49 L. Ed. 937 (1905), the Court held that a New York statute setting maximum work hours was constitutional be- cause such regulation was within the state’s POLICE POWER. In reaching this decision, the Court did not attempt to balance the rights of the individuals against the state’s interests, but it took a straightforward look at the language of the statu te and found it valid. This earlier Court stated: “The purpose of a statute must be determined from the natural and legal effect of the language employed It seems to us that the real object and purpose [of the statute] were simply to regulate the hours of labor between the master and his employees.” Early proponents of balancing included such prominent Supreme Court justices as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, and HARLAN F. STONE, all of whom sat on the Court in the early to middle 1900s. Holm es, sometimes called the patron saint of the anti- formalist movement, was one of the first to espouse the idea that the law is and should be an evolving product of social experience. He assailed the notion that rigid formulas could be applied to all situations before the Court. “[T]he law is a logical development, like everything else,” he wrote. In a similar vein, Brandeis criticized the Court for ignoring contemporary social, political, and economic problems. He said, “[W]hether a measure relating to the public WELFARE is arbitrary or unreasonable should be based upon a consideration of relevant facts, actual or possi- ble” (Adams v. Tanner, 244 U.S. 590, 37 S. Ct. 662, 61 L. Ed. 1336 [1917] [Brandeis, J., dissenting]). In another case, he wrote: “Wheth- er a law enacted in the exercise of the police power is justly subject to the charge of being unreasonable or arbitrary can ordinarily be determined only by a consideration of the contemporary conditions, social, industrial, GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BALANCING 481 and political, of the commun ity to be affected thereby. Resort to such facts is necessary, among other things, in order to appreciate the evils sought to be remedied and the possible effects of the remedy proposed” (Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312, 42 S. Ct. 124, 66 L. Ed. 254 [1921] [Brandeis, J., dissenting]). Similarly, Stone forcefully advocated “consideration of all the facts and circumstances” in a case, including societal conditions that affected the parties, the controversy, and the outcome (DiSanto v. Pennsylvania, 273 U.S. 34, 47 S. Ct. 267, 71 L. Ed. 524 [1927][Stone, J., dissenting]). The Court uses a balancing approach most often to decide cases where constitutionally protected individual rights conflict with gov- ernmental interests. Many of the landmark constitutional cases of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were decided in this manner, including ROE V. WADE, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 47 (1973), which legalized ABORTION.In reaching its decision in Roe, the Court found that in the first trimester of pregnancy, a woman’s right to privacy outweighed the state’s interest in protecting health, but in the later stages of pregnancy, the state’s interest gradually outweighed the woman’s. Contrary to popular belief, however, the Court has not used balancing as its primary method of deciding constitutional cases. In fact, some of the most important constitutional cases of the twentieth century were decided without any balancing of competing interests. For example, balancing was not used to decide BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954) (outlawing segregated public schools); GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 (1963) (guaranteeing indigent defendants appointed counsel in felony cases); and GRISWOLD V . CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965) (outlawing state laws prohibiting contraceptives). Balancing has always aroused controversy among legal scholars and judges. Critics con- tend that it gives too much discretion to judges and amounts to a USURPATION of the legislative function. They maintain that it is a vague and arbitrary method of measuring unequal inter- ests against each other and that it results in unpredictable decision making. One vocal critic of balancing is Justice ANTONIN SCALIA.Inhis dissenting opinion in Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, 486 U.S. 888, 108 S. Ct. 2218, 100 L. Ed. 2d 896 (1988), he characterized the balancing of competing interests as an illusion. “[T]he scale analogy is not really appropriate,” he wrote, “since the interests on both sides are incommensurate. It is more like judging whether a particular line is longer than a particular rock is heavy.” Scalia’s frontal attack on balancing gained force in the 1990s when Scalia was joined on the Court by other justices who shared his philoso- phy that the Constitution should be construed strictly and literally. Evidence that Scalia’s view was held by others on the Court can be found in the 1995 decision Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S.646, 115 S. Ct. 2386, 132 L. Ed. 2d 564 (U.S. 1995), which held that schools could legally perform random drug tests on student athletes. The decision employed a straightforward analysis of the rationality of the school’s policy to conduct random drug tests and dismissed concerns about infringe- ment of the students’ FOURTH AMENDMENT right to be free from unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Scalia stated: “The most significant element in this case is that the policy was undertaken in furtherance of the government’s responsibilities, under a public school system, as guardian and tutor of children entrusted to its care.” The Court held that the testing was a type of search that “a reasonable guardian and tutor might undertake.” Three justices disagreed vehemently. Writ- ing for the dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor emphasized her belief that the decision did not give due recognition to the students’ constitu- tional rights and went too far in its broad approval of “intrusive, blanket searches of school children, most of whom are innocent, for evidence of serious wrongdoing.” Under the ruling, she said, students no longer enjoyed “the Fourth Amendment’s most basic protection: its strong preference for an individu- alized suspicion requirement.” Justice O’Connor’s dissent in Acton echoed her strong approval of balancing competing interests and assessing a statute’s intrusion on individual rights. O’Connor expressed her belief that balancing is an essential step in the Court’s decision-making process, in Employment Divi- sion, Department of Human Resources v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 S. Ct. 1595, 108 L. Ed. 2d 876 (1990). The respondents in Smith were Native Americans who were fired from their jobs because they ingested peyote as part of a GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 482 BALANCING religious ceremony. The Court held that the state could deny them unemployment benefits without violating the Free Exercise Clause of the FIRST AMENDMENT.O’Connor concurred with the result but took issue with the majority’s failure to consider the effect the disputed statu te had on the free exercise of RELIGION. “To me,” O’Connor wrote, “the sounder approach—the approach more consistent with our role as judges to decide each case on its individual merits—is to apply [a] test in each case to determine whether the burden on the specific plaintiffs before us is constitutionally significant and whether the particular interest asserted by the State before us is compelling.” Balancing of Competing Interests in Other State and Federal Courts Although the U.S. Supreme Court generates close scrutiny of its decisions when it applies a balancing test to resolve high-profile or contro- versial issues before it, it is not the only court that resolves issues by balancing competing interests at stake in a legal dispute. Indeed, every day across the country state and federal courts are asked to balance the competing interests of litigants in determining the admissibility of evidence, the appropriateness of a sentence, or the viability of an appeal. For example, state and FEDERAL RULES OF EVIDENCE call for the exclusion of relevant evidence when its probative value is substantial- ly outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or the needless presentation of cumulative or confusing evidence. Consequently, before one party may introduce relevant evidence over another party’s OBJECTION, the judge must balance the competing interests that would be served by excluding or admitting the evidence in question. State and federal SENTENCING guidelines also generally require judges to balance the aggra- vating and MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES underlying a criminal offen se before imposing a particular sentence on a DEFENDANT. Aggravating factors are those factors that justify a more severe punishment and are typically introduced by the prosecution, victim, or victim’s family. Mitigating factors are those factors that justify a less severe sentence and are typically intro- duced by the defendant, the defendant’s ATTOR- NEY ,orWITNESSES speaking on behalf of the defendant. Finally, appellate courts often ENGAGE in some form of balancing to review the lawfulness of a lower court decision. In addition, to the above examples from the U.S. Supreme Court, appellate courts employ a variety of standards of review by which they evaluate the record for error using some form of balancing analysis. For example, the substantial evidence standard of review requires appellate courts to determine if a lower court’s decision was supported by sufficient evidence to avoid being overturned, meaning that the appellate court must weigh the evidence offered by the parties to some extent. Appellate courts applying the arbitrary and capricious standard of review must not only examine the gravity of the alleged arbitrary or capricious conduct in the lower court, but they must also take into consideration any evidence that makes the lower court’s decision reasonable or justifiable. FURTHER READINGS Alexy, Robert. 2003. “Constitutional Rights, Balancing, and Rationality.” Ratio Juris 16, vol. 2 (June). Gottlieb, Stephen E., ed. 1993. Public Values in Constitution- al Law. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press. McKenna, George. 2007. The Constitution: That Delicate Balance. New York: Random House. CROSS REFERENCES Child Pornography; Deadly Force; Fourth Amendment; Judicial Review; Jurisprudence; Police Power; Precedent; Probable Cause; Strict Construction. v BALDWIN, HENRY Henry Baldwin w as a prominent Pennsylvania ATTORNEY and politician who later became an ASSOCIATE JUSTICE of the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served for fourteen years. Descended from an aristocratic British family dating back to the seventeenth century, Baldwin was born January 14, 1780, in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up on a farm near New Haven and later moved to the city to attend Yale College. After graduating with honors in 1797, he studied law in Philadelphia with ALEXANDER J. DALLAS, a noted attorney. Admitted to the bar a short time later, Baldwin originally planned to establish a practice in Ohio, but instead settled in Pittsburgh. He then established a successful law firm with two other young attorneys. By his mid-20s, Baldwin had established a reputation as a legal scholar, in part because of his thorough and well- researched law briefs. He had also developed WORDS ARE BUT THE EVIDENCE OF INTENTION ; THEIR IMPORT IS THEIR MEANING , TO BE GATHERED FROM THE CONTEXT , AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER . —HENRY BALDWIN GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BALDWIN, HENRY 483 an extensive personal la w library, which con- tained a large collection of valuable English case reports and was among the finest and largest in the Northeast. Furthermore, Baldwin and his law partners were known for their political and civic leadership. The three publish ed a news- paper, the Tree of Liberty, which supported the REPUBLICAN PARTY of western Pennsylvania. In addition to his political activities and his law practice, Baldwin found time for business, acting as part-owner of several mills in Pennsylvania and Ohio. After the death of his first wife, Baldwin married Sally Ellicott, and they established a residence in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. In 1816 Baldwin was elected representative to the U.S. Congress for that area. As a congressman, Baldwin was active in trade issues and was a strong advocate of TARIFF protection. He was also involved in mediating boundary disputes between northern and southern states and their representatives. He was twice reelected to the House. In 1822 he was forced to resign his seat because of illness. He returned home to Pennsylvania, where he once again practiced law and was active in local political affairs. Baldwin soon became an avid supporter of ANDREW JACKSON and was a trusted adviser to Jackson concerning Pennsylvania politics. After Jackson was elected president in 1828, Baldwin hoped to become secretary of the treasury, but the appointment instead went to Samuel D. Ingham. The following year, after the death of Justice BUSHROD WASHINGTON, Jackson nomi- nated Baldwin to the U.S. Supreme Court, against the wishes of his VICE PRESIDENT, JOHN C. CALHOUN, who preferred another candidate. Though Baldwin’s protectionist views created some controversy, he was confirmed by the Senate with only two dissenting votes from southern senators who opposed his policies on tariffs. On the bench, Baldwin was at first a strong supporter of the liberal views of Chief Justice JOHN MARSHALL but gradually moved toward a more moderate interpretation of the Constitu- tion, favoring neither state sovereignty nor federal supremacy. In 1837 he published a pamphlet, A General View of the Origin and Nature of the Constitution and Government of the United States, in which he set forth what he termed his “peculiar views of the Constitution.” In this work, he emphasized his position as a moderate on the Court, stating that he tended to take the Constitution “as it is, and to expound it by the accepte d rules of interpreta- tion.” Baldwin also believed that the Court must Henry Baldwin 1780–1844 ◆◆◆ ◆ ❖ ❖ 1837 A General View of the Origin and Nature of the Constitution and Government of the United States published 1844 Died, Philadelphia, Pa. 1816–22 Represented Pennsylvania in U.S. House of Representatives 1829 Nominated to U.S. Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson 1775–83 American Revolution 1780 Born, New Haven, Conn. 1787 Pennsylvania ratified U.S. Constitution 1797 Received LL.D. from Yale University ▼▼ ▼▼ 1775 1850 1825 1800 Henry Baldwin. THOMAS SULLY, COLLECTION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 484 BALDWIN, HENRY be politically sensitive when determ ining which powers belonged to the federal government and which remained with the states. One of Baldwin’s most influential majority opinions was United States v. Arredondo, 31 U.S. 691, 6 Pet. 691, 8 L. Ed. 547 (1832), in which the Court held that PUBLIC POLICY prevented the government from violating federal land treaties. With respect to the issue of SLAVERY,however, Baldwin’s views were considered to be much more radical than those held by other members of the Court. In Groves v. Slaughter, 40 U.S. 449, 15 Pet. 449,10 L.Ed.800 (1841), the Court considered the constitutionality of a Mississippi provision that prevented the importation of slaves into the state. The Court ultimately struck down the statute on technical reasons, but Baldwin, in a separate opinion, argued that slaves were property as well as persons and viewed the prohibition as an obstruction of interstate commerce. He was the sole dissenter in United States v. The Schooner Armistead, 40 U.S. 518, 15 Pet. 518, 10 L. Ed. 826 (1841), in which the Court held that slaves who had mutinied and taken over the slave ship transporting them from Africa should be set free. Though he did not write an opinion, Baldwin had earlier maintained that the slaves should be returned to the custody of the slave traders. As was the practice in the Court at the time, Baldwin traveled the circuit he represen ted, which included Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to hear cases. He heard important cases involving the construction of a will that made a bequest for charitable purposes and also presided over the trial of John F. Braddel, who in 1840 was accused of robbi ng the mails. In his later years, Baldwin was plagued by financial and personal difficulties. He never fully recovered from losing a great deal of money during the depression of 1820. He also suffered from the failure of several speculative businesses, and he had to support some of his adult children when they got into financial trouble. He was eventually forced to sell his renowned personal law library to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS to raise money. He also published and sold volumes of the opinions he decided while traveling the circuit. At the same time, Baldwin’s behavior became erratic and he was widely reported to be suffering from mental illness. While on the bench, he was often restless, inattentive, and abusive to litigants and his fellow justices. While on the circuit, he also exhibited bizarre behavior at times, often having coffee and cakes brought to him while he heard cases. Chief Justice ROGER B. TANEY was reported to be so concerned about Baldwin’s unpredictable behavior that he advised President Jackson not to take action against the BANK OF THE UNITED STATES because Baldwin, as presiding judge over the case in Philadelphia, would be unreliable. Baldwin’s tenure on the Court ended on April 21, 1844, when he died of paralysis at the age of sixty-four. He was deeply in debt at the time of his death, and friends and family took up a collection to pay for his funeral expenses. FURTHER READINGS Congressional Quarterly. 1989. Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. Elliott, Stephen P., ed. 1986. A Reference Guide to the United States Supreme Court. New York: Facts on File. Swisher, Carl B. 1974. The Taney Period, 1836–1864. Vol. 5 of History of the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Macmillan. v BALDWIN, JOSEPH GLOVER Joseph Glover Baldwin achieved prominence as a jurist and author despite his lack of formal education. Joseph Glover Baldwin 1815–1864 ◆◆ ◆ ◆ ◆◆ ❖ ❖ 1815 Born near Winchester, Va. 1817 Mississippi gained statehood 1819 Alabama gained statehood 1836 Established legal practice in DeKalb, Miss. 1853 The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi published 1850 California gained statehood 1854 Moved to San Francisco, Ca. 1844–49 Served as Alabama state legislator 1858–62 Served as associate justice of the California Supreme Court 1861–65 U.S. Civil War 1864 Died, San Francisco, Ca. ▼▼ ▼▼ 18001800 18751875 18501850 18251825 GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BALDWIN, JOSEPH GLOVER 485 Baldwin was born in January, 1815, near Winchester, Virginia. After establishing a legal practice in 1836 in DeKalb, Mississippi, he relocated to Alabama and entered the legislature of the state in 1844, serving for five years. In 1854 Baldwin moved again, this time to San Francisco. He maintained a successful practice and was involved in the formulation of the judicial system of San Francisco. He officially entered the judiciary in 1858, presiding as ASSOCIATE JUSTICE of the California Supreme Court until 1862. As an author, Baldwin is famous for The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi (1853) and Party Leaders (1855). He died September 30, 1864, in San Francisco, California. v BALDWIN, ROGER NASH Roger Nash Baldwin spent his life crusading for CIVIL RIGHTS and liberties and was one of the principal founders of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU). Baldwin was born January 21, 1884, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, into a comfortably well-to-do Boston Brahmin family. His ances- tral roots reached back to what he once referred to as “the inescapable Mayflower.” His father, Frank Fenno Baldwin, was a conservative businessman. His mother, Lucy Cushing Nash, instilled in her children a love of art, literature, and musi c. Baldwin’s parents raised their six children with all the privileges and advantages their wealth could provide, but they also emphasized service to others. The family attended the Unitarian Church, where an emphasis on helping others sowed in Baldwin the seeds of a social work career. Baldwin was an unconventional boy who was not interested in competitive endeavors and shared his mother’s interest in literature and art. He was a nonconformist who was influenced by Henry David Thoreau’s philosophy of individu- alism and self-reliance. Although his parents were conservative, the young Baldwin was introduced to many progressive leaders at the home of his uncle and aunt, William Baldwin and Ruth Standish Bowles Baldwin. His uncle was president of the Long Island Railroad, director of the National Child Labor Commit- tee, and a TRUSTEE of Tuskegee Institute. He also worked to end prostitution,. His aunt supported the fledgling labor movement and was a founder of the NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, a trustee of Smith College, and a member of the SOCIALIST PARTY . The couple often entertained the social reformers of the day, and Baldwi n was influ- enced by his exposure to their somewhat radical ideas. Baldwin was educated at Harvard, earning both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree there. In 1906 he left the East and headed for St. Louis to be a social worker. He directed a social settlement house for poor people and taught the first sociology courses offered at Washington University, in St. Louis. He became the chief probation officer of the St. Louis Juvenile Court in 1908. While in that position, he and Bernard Flexner coauthored the first textbook on the juvenile courts. Their book, Juvenile Courts and Probation, set out profes- sional standards for juvenile practice and was the standard text in the field until the 1960s. In 1910 Baldwin became the secretary of the St. Louis Civic League, an urban reform agency supporting civic causes. Roger Nash Baldwin 1884–1981 ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆ ❖ ❖ 1961–73 Vietnam War 1981 Awarded Medal of Freedom; died, Oakland, N.J. 1940 All communist members of ACLU board removed 1939–45 World War II 1950 Retired as director of ACLU 1925 ACLU joined defense team of Scopes "Monkey" trial 1920 Helped organize and became first director of ACLU 1917 Organized American Union Against Militarism 1914–18 World War I 1914 Juvenile Courts and Probation published 1904 Graduated from Harvard University 1908 Became chief probation officer of the St. Louis Juvenile Court 1884 Born, Wellesley, Mass. ▼▼ ▼▼ 19001900 18801880 19251925 19501950 19751975 GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 486 BALDWIN, ROGER NASH While working in St. Louis, Baldwin met and became friends with the anarchist EMMA GOLDMAN. His first defense of free speech came in 1912 when he spoke in support of MARGARET SANGER,an early crusader for BIRTH CONTROL and reproduc- tive rights, whose lecture was shut down by the police. Through the social work profession he was attracted to the reform movement and the labor movement. He organized the Division on Industrial and Economic Problems at the 1916 meeting of the National Conference of Social Work, and wrote a report calling for cooperative production and distribution systems to replace competitive labor systems. In 1917, when the United States entered WORLD WAR I, Baldwin organized the American Union against Militarism (AUAM), which was later replaced by the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB). In its early days, the AUAM was concerned with defending those who refused to be drafted to serve in the war. Baldwin was among the conscientious objectors opposed to the draft, and he was sentenced to a year in jail for his refusal to register. In a speech to the court before he was sentenced, he explained that his reason for opposing the draft was his “uncompromising opposition to the principle of CONSCRIPTION of life by the state for any purpose whatever, in time of war or peace.” After his release from prison, Baldwin worked as a common laborer around the Midwest and joined the radical International Workers of the World (IWW) union. He returned to New York in 1920 to help reorganize and reconstitute the NCLB with two conservative lawyers, Albert DeSilver and Walter Nelles, who shared his passion for championing the rights of the oppressed. Baldwin agreed to head the new organization, named the American Civil Liberties Union, and carry out its unique mission to impartially defend the civil liberties of all U.S. citizens, regardless of their affiliation or activities. Baldwin was launched in what would be a long and vigorous struggle to create “a society with a minimum of compulsion, a maximum of individual freedom and of voluntary association, and the abolition of exploitation and poverty.” Perhaps it was inevitable that Baldwin would become associated with leftist causes, because the people most in need of free speech protection during the 1920s and 1930s were often political liberals and radicals. He once told an interviewer that during this time he was heavily influenced by the Marxist theory that “the real center in society was the organized underdog in the trade unions,” which he believed was true although only part of the whole picture. Baldwin came to realize that the civil liberties of right-wing groups were just as likely to be infringed as those of left-wingers. Bewildered and frustrated by liberal groups who opposed the ACLU’s support of free speech rights for the American Nazi party or the KU KLUX KLAN, Baldwin said, “[T]hese people can be just as great tyrants as the other side helping them get freedo m didn’t help the cause of freedom.” Referring to the wide variety of causes the ACLU defended over the years, Baldwin said, “I always felt from the beginning that you had to defend people you disliked and feared as well as those you admired.” Although not a member of any party, he supported the causes of Communists, Socialists, and other leftist organizations during the 1920s and 1930s. However, in 1940, when he began to realize that the Communist label was being used by totalitarian governments, he wrote a resolution that resulted in the removal of all the Communist members of the ACLU board. Ironically, Baldwin’s resolution became the model for government loyalty oaths, which the ACLU later attacked in court. Although he was a card-carrying Wobbly, as members of the IWW were called, Baldwin could not be categorized as liberal or conserva- tive. He was active in the National Audubon Society, the American Political Science Associa- tion, and a number of other organizations on both ends of the political spectrum. The only label Baldwin accepted for himself was that of reformer: “I am dead certain that human progress depends on those heretics, rebels and dreamers who have been my kin in spirit and whose ‘holy discontent’ has challenged estab- lished authority and created the expanding visions mankind may yet realize .” During the years of Baldwin’s leadership, the ACLU, using volunteer lawyers, was involved in a wide variety of civil liberties cases, especially involving free speech and assembly. One con- cerned a 1925 Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. The ACLU defended a science teacher, John Thomas Scopes, charged with violating the law (Scopes v. State, 152 Tenn. 424, 278 S.W. 57 [1925]; 154 Tenn. 105, 289 S.W. 363 [1927]). WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN , a three-time presidential candidate and well-known fundamentalist, helped the state attorney general PROSECUTE the case, and the [OUR GOAL IS] A SOCIETY WITH A MINIMUM OF COMPULSION , A MAXIMUM OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AND OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION , AND THE ABOLITION OF EXPLOITATION AND POVERTY . —ROGER NASH BALDWIN GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BALDWIN, ROGER NASH 487 . as associate justice of the California Supreme Court 18 61 65 U.S. Civil War 18 64 Died, San Francisco, Ca. ▼▼ ▼▼ 18 0 018 00 18 7 518 75 18 5 018 50 18 2 518 25 GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BALDWIN,. Louis Juvenile Court 18 84 Born, Wellesley, Mass. ▼▼ ▼▼ 19 0 019 00 18 8 018 80 19 2 519 25 19 5 019 50 19 7 519 75 GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 486 BALDWIN, ROGER NASH While working in St. Louis,. Baldwin 18 84 19 81 ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆ ❖ ❖ 19 61 73 Vietnam War 19 81 Awarded Medal of Freedom; died, Oakland, N.J. 19 40 All communist members of ACLU board removed 19 39–45 World War II 19 50 Retired as director of ACLU 19 25