01-29-2017, 07:24 PM
(01-29-2017, 07:19 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(01-29-2017, 12:51 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(01-29-2017, 03:19 AM)Galen Wrote: Actually up until the mid-twentieth century it was understood that people have the right choose what do to with their property and whom they might choose to do business with. I would recommend Conceived in Liberty by Murray Rothbard which is a very good history of Colonial America through to the early Federal period. It was actually very well received by historians at the time an well worth your time to read.
I have to differ with you here a bit. Segregation laws certainly infringed on rights of free association. Miscegenation laws, which were not limited to the South, were perhaps the most egregious examples, and incidentally show that the government doesn't distinguish between "private" behavior and "public" behavior the way that Bob personally does.
Classical liberalism was indeed the guiding philosophy under which the US was founded; however, it ceased to be the guiding philosophy in the early 20th century with the 16th, 17th and 18th amendments.
Nitpick. I agree entirely that the 16th, 17th and 18th amendment marked a significant break in guiding philosophy. However, at the end of Reconstruction, at the beginning of Jim Crow, the US Supreme Court essentially nullified the intent of the 16th, 17th and 18th Amendments. I would suggest this should count as another significant break, another change in the guiding philosophy. I'd also nominate Thurgood Marshall's efforts in the mid 20th Century to restore the intent of the 16th, 17th and 18th Amendments as another significant break.
On other threads dealing with other issues I have argued that the Supreme Court ought to honor the wording of the text and the intent of the authors rather than legislating from the bench or applying modern political objectives as trumping rule of law. I might be the only vaguely blue person on the board who sympathized with Scalia. I developed this attitude when researching the Jim Crow era Supreme Court cases. A handful of old men turned the law and the country upside down.
Race has played a large role in US legal theory and precedent. A huge role. I suspect there is a conspiracy to avoid examination of the Jim Crow court as the period discredits the Supreme Court as an institution. I feel that way, anyway.
Anyway, race and tidal changes in Supreme Court precedent and philosophy are a hot button issues for me.
-- wait a sec, isn't one of those the income tax amendment? What does that have to do with Jim Crow?
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