Reconstruction, Deconstruction and Legislative Response: The 1988 Supreme Court Term and the Civil Rights Act of 1990

• NCJ Number: 129601
• Journal: Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1990) Pages: 475-590
• Author(s): S Hemeryck; C Butts; L Jehl; A Koch; M Sloan
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 116 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Historical trends in the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on civil rights are reviewed, and provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1990 are detailed.

Abstract

During 1988, the Supreme Court had a conservative majority and handed down a series of decisions that narrowly interpreted Federal civil rights laws and heavily burdened plaintiffs. These decisions dealt a severe blow to efforts to achieve rights for minorities and women. The Supreme Court's retrenchment is compared to the dismantling by an earlier Supreme Court of congressional attempts to protect the civil rights of blacks following the Civil War. In the postwar Reconstruction era, ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments guaranteed the rights of blacks to freedom and equality. Congress sought to enforce those guarantees through the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Enforcement Act of 1870, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1871 and 1875, each of which solidified protection of the rights of blacks by expanding the rights of national citizenship. In the 1870's and 1880's, however, these reforms were systematically dismantled in a series of Supreme Court decisions that struck down provisions of civil rights legislation as beyond Congress' constitutional authority to enact and severely limited the application of Reconstruction amendments to acts of discrimination committed or authorized by States. Not until 1954, when the second Reconstruction began with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, were the rights of blacks again asserted by the Supreme Court and Congress. The Supreme Court took the lead in guaranteeing civil rights, upholding and liberally interpreting the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and reviving Reconstruction era statutes. In the 1980's, however, the Supreme Court reversed course and began to chip away at civil rights statutes. The Civil Rights Act of 1990 represents Congress' current effort to reaffirm its commitment to civil rights and to preclude application of the Supreme Court's restrictive interpretation of important antidiscrimination provisions. 598 footnotes