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The Slaughterhouse Cases

By Jonathan Lurie

Product Image: The Slaughterhouse Cases

The Slaughterhouse Cases

By Jonathan Lurie

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Description
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, sought to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves; but its first important test did not arise until five years later. When it did, it centered on a vitriolte dispute among the white butchers of mid-Reconstruction New Orleans. The rough-and-tumble world of nineteenth-century New Orleans was a sanitation nightmare, with the city's slaughterhouses dumping animal remains into neighboring backwaters. When Louisiana authorized a monopoly slaughterhouse to bring about sanitation reform, many butchers felt disenfranchised. Framing their case as an infringement of rights protected by the new amendment, they flooded the lower courts with nearly 300 suits. The surviving cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court pitted the butchers' right-to-labor against the state's "police power" to regulate public health. The result was a controversial decision that for the first time addressed the meaning and import of the Fourteenth Amendment. Speaking for the slim majority in the Court's 5-4 decision, Justice Samuel F. Miller upheld the state's actions as a fair use of its "police power." Of much greater import, however, was Miller's finding that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended exclusively as a means of protecting and redressing the suffering of former slaves. The result was a very restricted interpretation of the "privileges and immanities, "due process," and "equal protection" clauses of the new amendment. The Court refused to allow the broad terms of a single amendment to alter the existing balance of power between the states and the federal government. In striking contrast, the minority, led by Justice Stephen Field, claimed thatthe Fourteenth Amendment had been intended to apply to all Americans, not just former slaves. In particular, it guaranteed the New Orleans butchers a right to equal treatment in the exercise of the police power. Engagingly written and insightfully argued, the book provides t
Product details
Edition:
illustrated
Number of Pages:
295
Release Date:
2003-11-01
Publication Date:
2003-11-14
Publisher:
University Press of Kansas
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0700612904
ISBN13:
9780700612901
Weight:
694 g
Height:
159 cm
Width:
247 cm
Thickness:
27 cm
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