Buck v. Bell

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             Buck v. Bell

The U.S. Supreme Court has sometimes made some very bad rulings. Readers may remember for instance Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States, as prime examples. But one terrible ruling which is seldom mentioned is Buck v. Bell.

When Charles Darwin wrote about evolution and the survival of the fittest, he had no notion of what would follow. The question asked was "If this was true in the animal kingdom,must it also be true of humans as well?"The science of human improvement developed into an intellectual movement called "eugenics" from the Greek "eu" for "good" and "genes" for born. The science for improving stock.

The eugenics movement found support from the medical profession, lawyers, and journalists. Women supported the movement.
Magazines carried stories about eugenics. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald even wrote a playful song about eugenics.

All of this took place as the Immigration Act of 1924 favored immigrants from Northern Europe and greatly reduced the number of Jews and Italians. The fear was that they would dilute our superior gene pool.

Some state institutions were already sterilizing inmates, but the State of Virginia hesitated until sterilization was proven to be lawful. A test case was needed. For the sake of brevity here, the lower courts rulings led to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The poor unlucky person for this test case was Carrie Buck, a seventeen year old girl who had born a child out of wedlock. She had been raped by the nephew of the couple she had worked for. They wanted her out of the way and in an institution where her mother was, being judged as "feeble minded." Carrie was judged a a moron and as such was placed in the same institution for epileptics and feeble-minded. Where her mother was located. Evidence of her grades in school were average and that she was promoted every year until the sixth grade when she became employed in housework. These facts never were heard in court.

Room does not permit me to relate all the details of the case but I will have to say something about the Supreme Court at that time. The Chief Justice was William Howard Taft, who had once served as President. Another well-known justice was Louis Bandeis,but the one outstanding member of the court was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Homes was a Boston Brahmin-a member of the most rarefied social caste. His father father was a doctor and had written the famous poem "Old Ironsides," credited to saving the USS Constitution from being scrapped. Holmes attended Harvard, and through family connections, including Teddy Roosevelt, was appointed to the Supreme Court.

Holmes was admired for his wisdom and his service during the Civil War. Praise was showered upon him. But his public persona was far different from his private one.

Holmes's support for eugenics was notable for the extremity of his views. He was not a supporter of causes. He was indifferent to laws concerning child labor, antitrust laws, and other progressive goals.

As Wold War I approached Holmes supported the war, and wrote the majority opinion, upholding the ten year conviction of E  gene V. Debs, a socialist leader for giving an antiwar, anti draft speech.

Holmes wrote the majority opinion for the court declaring that Carrie Buck should be sterilized-and that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." The one dissent to the ruling came from Pierce Butler, and he wrote no dissenting opinion.

Virginia had won the case. Carrie was sterilized, as were others. She was released from the colony, later was twice married and found that she could not conceive and discovered what she thought was for an appendix operation. Her later life was one of hardship, but people who knew her said that she was highly intelligent and loved reading the daily paper, and doing crossword puzzles.

The effect of the court's ruling was felt beyond the United States. Sweden,Norway, Iceland,Estonia, and of course Germany. Following the defeat of the Nazis, and the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the defense cited Buck v, Bell arguing that the sterilizing was proper. Estimates are that Nazi leaders sterilized 375,000 people.    

Buck v. Bell is little remembered today and has never been over-turned. Of all the cases I learned about in college, this was never discussed. And it is one of the great miscarriages of justice. The pendulum has swung against eugenic sterilization, but will it swing back?

I owe a huge debt to Adam Cohen, author of
"Imbeciles, The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck." Penguin Books 2016.

     Aloha
     Grant