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A Judicial Abandonment of Blacks? Rethinking the “State Action” Cases of the Waite Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Pamela Brandwein
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Abstract

This article reconsiders the conventional wisdom that the Supreme Court definitively abandoned the freedmen to their former masters through the “state action” decisions of the 1870s and 1880s. Arguing that anachronisms distort our understanding of this critical period, I offer an historical institutional analysis of state action doctrine by recovering the legal categories, assumptions, and distinctions that constituted judicial discourse about the state action rule. Showing that federal power to protect blacks was more intact than scholars realize, I also add a perspective from the sociology of knowledge. By examining a series of modern developments that erased the contexts of the state action decisions, I show how institutional practices gave rise to the anachronisms that this article seeks to correct.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 343 - 386
Copyright
© 2007 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

I am deeply grateful to the many people who offered comments on part or all of this material: Richard Aynes, Michael Les Benedict, Daniel Ernst, Bryant Garth, Mark Graber, Ronald Kahn, Ken Kersch, George Lovell, Julie Novkov, Daniel Sharfstein, Rogers Smith, Rick Valelly, G. Edward White, and Bryan Wildenthal. When this material was in its infancy, Sanford Levinson and Mark Tushnet provided highly useful remarks as well. I am also singularly thankful to Robert C. Post for his generous response and critical commentary at a vital time. Herbert Kritzer offered excellent advice, and I would like to convey my appreciation to him and the referees at LSR. I am most indebted, finally, to Douglas C. Dow, who has offered invaluable criticism from the earliest stages of this project.

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