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Supreme Court Behavior in Racial Exclusion Cases: 1935–1960
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Extract
The United States Supreme Court is often guided by rules of law which make the disposition of cases depend upon singular combinations of circumstances. It is a relatively simple procedure to go through the cases in a subject matter area and compile a list of the facts the justices seem to have considered material to their solution of the issue at hand. But the identification of the peculiar combinations of events which push the decisions in one direction or the other is more difficult. The number of possible combinations is almost endless: with as few as twenty specified circumstances there are more than one million possible combinations. And the weight of a particular circumstance may depend on the combination of factors in which it appears.
Fred Kort has pointed to the “concrete differentiation of factual elements” which seem decisive in cases involving such procedural civil rights as protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, coerced confessions, and unfair trial procedures.
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1962
References
1 Kort, Fred, “Predicting Supreme Court Decisions Mathematically: A Quantitative Analysis of the Right to Counsel Cases,” this Review, Vol. 51 (03, 1957), pp. 1–12Google Scholar.
2 18 USC at 243.
3 311 U.S. 128, 130 (1940).
4 As Black expressed it in Patton v. Mississippi: “Whether there has been systematic racial discrimination … in the selection of jurors is a question to be determined from the facts in each particular case.” 332 U. S. 463 at 466.
5 Fellman, David, The Defendant's Rights (1958), p. 103Google Scholar.
6 Loc. cit., p. 131.
7 316 U. S. 400, 404.
8 356 U. S. 584, 587.
9 For example, Alabama excludes those who are under age, habitual drunkards, permanently diseased or unfit because of physical weakness, illiterates (except property holders), and those convicted of any offense involving moral turpitude. Alabama exempts from jury service judges, attorneys, officers of the United States, officers of the Executive Department of the state, sheriffs, deputies, clerks of court, county commissioners, physicians, dentists, pharmacists, optometrists, teachers, actuaries, boat engineers, bus drivers, truck drivers (under jurisdiction of the Public Service Commission), railroad engineers, firemen, conductors, train dispatchers, bus dispatchers, railroad station agents, telegraph operators, reporters, embalmers, radiobroadcasting engineers and announcers, superintendents, doctors and regular employees of Bryce and Searcy Hospitals, officers and enlisted men of the National Guard and Naval Militia, convicts and prison guards. See Anderson v. Alabama, pending before the U. S. Supreme Court, 1961 Term, Docket No. 326.
10 It is only fair to say that the necessary distinction with supporting statistical data has not often been presented in the parties' briefs. On several occasions, the court has apparently found it necessary to take judicial notice of census data in order to reach a determination.
11 332 U.S. 463, 468–469. This comment was in response to an attempt by the Mississippi Supreme Court to play the role of statistician. “Of the 25 qualified Negro male electors there would be left, therefore, as those not exempt, 12 or 13 available male negro electors as compared with 5,500 to 6,000 male white electors as to whom, after deducting 500 to 1,000 exempt, would leave a proportion of 5,000 non-exempt white jurors to 12 or 13 non-exempt negro jurors, or about one fourth of one per cent negro jurors,— 400 to 1 …. For the reasons already heretofore stated there was only a chance of 1 in 400 that a Negro would appear on such a venire and as this venire was of 100 jurors, the sheriff, had he brought in a negro, would have had to discriminate against white jurors, not against negroes,—he could not be expected to bring in one fourth of one Negro.” (p. 467).
12 E. g., Cassell v. Texas, 339 U.S. 282, 286; Akins v. Texas, 325 U.S. 403.
13 Loc. cit., p. 291.
14 Unless otherwise indicated, all probability statistics used in this paper are two-tailed and were computed with the binomial expansion if N was small and with the binomial test and the Yates correction for continuity if N was large. The formula for the binomial expansion is
where P = proportion of cases expected in one category,
For large samples
15 333 U.S. 851 (1948).
16 350 U.S. 85 (1955).
17 356 U.S. 584 (1954).
18 344 U.S. 443 (1953).
19 325 U.S. 398 (1945).
20 Pritchett, C. Herman, The American Constitution (1959), p. 546Google Scholar.
21 Loc. cit., pp. 285–286.
22 Ibid., p. 286.
23 Loc. cit., p. 400.