At the end of the day, there are no rules. The “law” and “justice” in this country are all in support of empire and capital.
Buck v. Bell (1927)
The court ruled that the state has the “right” to control the “genetic stock”, roughly speaking of a place/people. More accurately, “we will do it; shut up about it or we will kill you too.”
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. […] Three generations of imbeciles are enough. – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)12
Another case of “you must be atleast x productive to exist in this world.” Very sad.
Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker (2008)
This decision is actually somewhat long. This one directly pits “justice” against capital+profit, so the real meat needs to be buried in more words.
There are three questions of maritime law before us: whether a shipowner may be liable for punitive damages without acquiescence in the actions causing harm, whether punitive damages have been barred implicitly by federal statutory law making no provision for them, and whether the award of $2.5 billion in this case is greater than maritime law should allow in the circumstances.
The Supreme Court only fined Exxon $2.5B $500M for dumping millions of barrels of oil into the ocean. That amounts
to maybe 1-2 days of their profits 3. No that was not nearly enough of a fine. There is no punishment for real
crimes. That just becomes the cost of doing business imperialism. There are so many externalities in the oil+gas
industry with a disgusting refusal to internalize them. That is a hilariously small fine for spilling millions of
barrels of oil into the ocean.
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
This case might represent peak white supremacy in US history. It is difficult to imagine anything but a war dealing with this type of effort to keep people enslaved by any means. The mental gymnastics is strong with this decision – more than 100 pages of reconciling why “All men are created equal” fits with a society completely predicated on the creation and enforcement of an underclass. From the beginning of American history, the law existed to protect some and bind others. Ruling the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as unconstitutional because the Congress did not have the authority to ban slavery in territories was just icing on the cake.
The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them 4.
I put this one low on the list despite it being bad enough to pave the way to a civil war because I think atleast 60% of Americans will write this case off as “just a few racists > 100 years ago with no relation to modern times” without digging into the real politics of the case. Quite sad.
US v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923)
The Supreme Court literally acted out Dave Chappelle’s “Race Draft” .
Hence, it seems to require a strong mental effort to sweep into a single category, however elastic, so many different peoples – Europeans, North Africans, West Asiatics, Iranians, and others all the way to the Indo-Gangetic plains and uplands, whose complexion presents every shade of color, except yellow, from white to the deepest brown or even black 5 6.
Section 2169, Revised Statutes, provides that the provisions of the Naturalization Act “shall apply to aliens being free white persons and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.”
Maybe for these racist dork ass losers. So if race was not only enshrined in the popular imagination, but also in the law, it only makes sense for many kinds of restitution to be on racial lines too. Since not so many Africans were “migration” across the Atlantic in 1923, white supremacy was really enshrined in all parts of the US government.
These supposedly grown ass men are bending over backwards to put way too many words around “we don’t like free nonwhite people in this country.”