Books in Landmark Law Cases and American Society series

The Supreme Court's controversial decision in Oregon v. Smith sharply departed from previous expansive readings of the First Amendment's religious freedom clause and ignited a firestorm of protest from legal scholars, religious groups, legislators, and Native Americans. Carolyn Long provides the first book-length analysis of Smith and shows why it continues to resonate so deeply in the American psyche. In 1983, Klamath Indian Alfred Smith and his co-worker Galen Black were fired as counselors from a drug rehabilitation agency for using peyote, a controlled substance under Oregon law, in a religious ceremony of the Native American Church. Both were subsequently denied unemployment benefits, which the State of Oregon claimed was permissible under its police powers and necessary in its effort to eradicate drug abuse. But Smith and Black argued that the denial of unemployment benefits constituted an infringement of their religious freedom and took their cases to court. Long traces the tortuous path that Smith followed as it went from state courts to the Supreme Court and then back again for a second round of hearings. A major event in Native American history, the case attracted widespread support for the Indian cause from a diverse array of religious groups eager to protect their own religious freedom. It also led to an intense tug-of-war between the Court and Congress, which fought back with amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (to protect the religious use of peyote) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which protected religious freedom for all Americans. The Court subsequently ruled the latter act unconstitutional in Boerne v. Flores (1997). Long provides a lucid and balanced view of the competing sides in Smith. Drawing on interviews with Smith and his family, as well as with lawyers, judges, and congressional and interest group representatives involved in this struggle between Congress and Court, she takes the reader from the rituals of a peyote religious ceremony to the halls of government to reveal the conflicting interests that emerged in this key First Amendment case. She also clarifies how the Court reversed longstanding precedent by replacing the balancing test of "compelling state interest" and "least restrictive means" with a new "reasonable basis" argument that theoretically could be used to curtail religious practices well beyond those of the Native American church. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protection of religious freedom applies only to laws that specifically target religious behavior and that an individual's religious beliefs do not excuse one from complying with statutes that indirectly infringe on their religious rights. Engagingly written, Long's study highlights the resultant struggles, but without ever losing sight of the rich human dimensions of the story.

Once the dust of the Revolution settled, the problem of reconciling the erstwhile warring factions arose, and as is often the case in the aftermath of violent revolutions, the matter made its way into the legal arena. Rutgers v. Waddington was such a case. Through this little-known but remarkable dispute over back rent for a burned-down brewery, Peter Charles Hoffer recounts a tale of political and constitutional intrigue involving some of the most important actors in America’s transition from a confederation of states under the Articles of Confederation to a national republic under the U.S. Constitution.At the end of the Revolution, the widow Rutgers and her sons returned to the brewery they’d abandoned when the British had occupied New York. They demanded rent from Waddington, the loyalist who had rented the facility under the British occupation. Under a punitive New York state law, the loyalist Waddington was liable. But the peace treaty’s provisions protecting loyalists’ property rights said otherwise. Appearing for the defendants was war veteran, future Federalist, and first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. And, as always, lurking in the background was the estimable Aaron Burr. As Hoffer details Hamilton's arguments for the supremacy of treaty law over state law, the significance of Rutgers v. Waddington in the development of a strong central government emerges clearly—as does the role of the courts in bridging the young nation’s divisions in the Revolution’s wake.Rutgers v. Waddington illustrates a foundational moment in American history. As such, it is an encapsulation of a society riven by war, buffeted by revolutionary change attempting to piece together the true meaning of, in John Adams’ formulation, “rule by law, and not by men.”

Through much of the 1990s, a newly hatched snake wreaked political havoc in the South.When North Carolina gained a seat in Congress following the 1990 census, it sought to rectify a long-standing failure to represent African American voters by creating, under federal pressure, two "majority-minority" voting districts. One of these snaked along Interstate 85 for nearly two hundred miles—not much wider than the road itself in some places—and was ridiculed by many as one of the least compact legislative districts ever proposed.From 1993 to 2001, three intertwined cases went before the Supreme Court that decided how far a state could go in establishing voting districts along racial lines. Noted Supreme Court biographer Tinsley Yarbrough examines these closely linked landmark cases to show how the Court addressed the constitutionality of redistricting within the volatile contexts of civil rights and partisan politics.A suit was first filed by Duke University law professor Robinson Everett, a liberal who loathed discrimination but considered racially motivated redistricting a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Yarbrough tells how Everett enlisted associates as plaintiffs and went on to win two Supreme Court victories in Shaw v. Reno (1993) and Shaw v. Hunt (1996)—both by 5-4 decisions. Following the creation of another "flawed" redistricting plan, he rounded up a new set of plaintiffs to take the battle back to the Supreme Court. But this time, in Easley v. Cromartie—on the swing vote of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor—the 5-4 vote went against him.Yarbrough shows the significant impact these cases have had on election law and the fascinating interplay of law, politics, and human conflict that the dispute generated. Drawing heavily on court records and on interviews with attorneys on both sides of the litigation, he relates a complex and intriguing tale about these protracted struggles. His cogent and balanced analysis considers whether the state legislature was wrong in using race as a measure for establishing the new district, or whether it was simply engaging in the time-honored practice of gerrymandering to ensure political balance.Race and Redistricting spotlights efforts to "racially engineer" voting districts in an effort to achieve fair representation. By examining one state's efforts to confront such dilemmas, it helps readers better understand future disputes over race and politics, as well as the ongoing debates over our "color-blind" constitution.

On Easter Sunday in 1873, more than one hundred black men were gunned down in Grant Parish, Louisiana, for daring to assert their right to vote. Several months earlier, in Lexington, Kentucky, another black man was denied the right to vote for simply failing to pay a poll tax. Both events typified the intense opposition to the federal guarantee of black voting rights. Both events led to landmark Supreme Court decisions. And, as Robert Goldman shows, both events have much to tell us about an America that was still deeply divided over the status of blacks during the Reconstruction era. Goldman deftly highlights the cases of United States v. Reese and United States v. Cruikshank within the context of an ongoing power struggle between state and federal authorities and the realities of being black in postwar America. Focusing especially on the so-called Reconstruction Amendments and Enforcement Acts, he argues that the decisions in Reese and Cruikshank signaled an enormous gap between guaranteed and enforced rights. The Court's decisions denied the very existence of any such guarantee and, further, conferred upon the states the right to determine who may vote and under what circumstances. In both decisions, lower court convictions were overturned through suprisingly narrrow rulings, despite the larger constitutional issues involved. In Reese the Court justified its decision by voiding only two sections of the Enforcement Acts, while in Cruikshank it merely voided the original indictments as being "insufficient in law" by failing to allege that the Grant Parish murders had been explicitly motivated by racial prejudice. Such legalistic reasoning marked the grim beginning of a nearly century-long struggle to reclaim what the Fifteenth Amendment had supposedly guaranteed. As Goldman shows, the Court's decisions undermined the fledgling efforts of the newly formed justice department and made it increasingly difficult to control the racial violence, intimidation, poll taxes, and other less visible means used by white southern Democrats to "redeem" their political power. The result was a disenfranchised black society in a hostile and still segregated South. Only with the emergence of a nationwide civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did things begin to change. Readable and insightful, Goldman's study offers students, scholars, and concerned citizens a strong reminder of what happens when courts refuse to enforce constitutional and legislated law-and what might happen again if we aren't vigilant in protecting the rights of all Americans. This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series.