Skip to main content

The Court: From Civil Rights to Individual Rights

From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism

Edward Lazarus, a clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court in 1988–89 and chief of staff at the Federal Communications Commission during Barack Obama's administration, published Closed Chambers in 1998, an account of the work of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Lazarus considers that it is history and geography that have shaped the character of the Court. The author identifies four decisive battles in its history: in 1937, the bitter clash over the powers and economic policy of the New Deal; in 1954, the fierce battle over the civil rights of Black Americans; in 1973, the struggle for individual rights; and in 1974, the ruling that marked the end of Richard Nixon's presidency.

Lazarus's supreme regionalism

According to Lazarus, the Supreme Court reflects the great divisions within the United States that precipitated the Civil War in the 19th century, the legacy of which remains in the country's political psychology: with the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the victorious North transformed the freed slaves into citizens, ordering the States to respect their civil rights. With the 13th Amendment, the Union Congress abolished slavery. During the Reconstruction era, while the South was under occupation (1865–77), Congress granted newly freed Black slaves citizenship and the right to due process. By adopting broad wording in the 14th Amendment, these rights – both federal and in the States of residence – were granted to all persons born or naturalised in the United States. With the 15th Amendment, lawmakers in Washington also prohibited States from restricting the right to vote on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude. Anticipating Southern resistance, writes Lazarus, the three amendments conferred the role of ultimate guardian upon the federal government and the federal courts.

With the end of Reconstruction, the Southern States reacted by passing laws that socially segregated Black people and effectively prevented Black people, as well as poor white people, from exercising their right to vote. The Supreme Court upheld the legality of these laws until the 1950s when, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, it decisively repudiated segregation and disenfranchisement, overruling the Southern States. The Warren era, writes Lazarus, is known as the Second Reconstruction, and many of its achievements have been enduring, just as the dialectic between federal and State powers has remained a constant.

The Warren Court and civil rights

The history of the Court can be subdivided according to the tenures of its chief justices, although the opinions and influence of the associate justices are also consequential. Warren led the Court for sixteen years, from 1953 to 1969, focusing primarily on civil rights. No court, however, can itself initiate legal proceedings, which explains the prominent role played by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), first under Charles Hamilton Houston, dean of Howard University School of Law, and later under his right-hand man, Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to become a Supreme Court justice.

The Second World War had brought the Black proletariat into the ranks of the military, and President Harry Truman, after appealing in vain to Congress, eliminated discrimination in federal hiring and the armed forces by executive order. Meanwhile, education benefits for all veterans (the GI Bill) boosted university enrolment, including at Black universities, to levels that the institutions could not cope with.

Amid this social and political upheaval, the NAACP adopted a strategy of organising within and through the law, pursuing cases suitable for a nationwide political battle against four types of segregation: transport, housing, trade unions, and higher education.

In 1954, Warren, who had been chief justice for a year, succeeded in securing a unanimous Court ruling that ended segregation in schools. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Warren wrote that State laws did not uphold the 14th Amendment, and that it should be read not on the basis of conditions existing when the 14th Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life.

However, the end of segregation in transport came after a 1956 ruling, itself following demonstrations by Black churches led by Reverend Martin Luther King.

In 1962 (Baker v. Carr), the Warren Court placed federal courts in charge of safeguarding voting rights and repeatedly intervened in cases of unequal treatment of defendants and detainees. In 1964, in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. US, it unanimously ruled that Congress had regulatory power over businesses and that companies must comply with the Civil Rights Act passed that year.

Along the way, writes Lazarus, the Supreme Court substantially enhanced its role in the nation's political life as well as the role of the federal government, sometimes at the expense of the States, in protecting the Constitution's newly established safeguards. It had extended its remit to include private transactions, provoking opposition from the States and from businesses. Meanwhile, Congress also intervened.

The Burger and Rehnquist Courts

In 1964 and 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson's administration secured congressional approval of two Civil Rights Acts advocating a policy of active support for integration, known as affirmative action. The aim, which was shared by some of his opponents, was to build a Black middle class. Over time, quotas were set for racial minorities in contracting, federal recruitment, and education. With all the disadvantages still faced by the Black and immigrant working class, affirmative action was grasped by the rising middle class of racial minorities, who sought access to universities, personal compensation in the event of dismissal, and a reserved share of public sector jobs and procurement contracts. The legal strategies of the NAACP and the new civil rights organisations were also crucial during this phase.

Warren Burger, appointed chief justice by Richard Nixon, led the Court for seventeen years from 1969 to 1986, intervening on individual rights issues and playing a part in the social change taking place. He upheld the constitutionality of quotas and expanded individual rights across a wide range of areas. The Burger Court, by a 5-4 vote, imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1972 (Furman v. Georgia), and in 1973 recognised abortion as a federal right in Roe v. Wade, a judgment written by Justice Harry Blackmun based on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. However, both rulings were subsequently overturned: Furman in 1976 (Gregg v. Georgia) by the Burger Court itself; Roe in 2022 (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization) by the Court led by current Chief Justice John Roberts.

William Rehnquist, appointed chief justice by Ronald Reagan, presided over the Court for nineteen years from 1986 to 2005, following fourteen years as an associate justice. A conservative on individual rights, his tenure was anticipated as a revolution against the expansion of civil and individual rights carried out by the Warren Court, which was seen as having also curtailed the freedom of businesses and the rights of the States.

The Rehnquist Court overturned the rulings in which the Burger Court had upheld minority quotas in universities and procurement, and scrutinised individual rights, including the federal right to abortion (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992). The Rehnquist counter-revolution was weakened by the wavering of Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Hackett Souter, judges appointed by Reagan and George HW Bush. Lazarus attributes their behaviour partly to calculation and partly to the geography of justice: The three justices, progeny of New England and the Frontier, reflected the North's traditional loyalty to Union values and the libertarian and regionalist spirit of the West. In this era, explains Lazarus, regional differences are widely assumed to have disappeared. The American population is often described as a rootless group of consumers. Yet, according to him, regional influence still explains the behaviour of the federal judicial power even at the highest level.

Translated from the original work by , published in Lotta Comunista, , p. 13.

Labels:

Popular posts in the last week

China’s Electromechanical Champions

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 9 From the series Major industrial groups in China Analysing the WTO data for 2023, it emerges that China exported goods worth $3,379 billion, surpassing the European Union and the United States. Industrial machinery accounted for over 7% of exports and electrical machinery 9%. In the same sectors, Chinese imports did not reach 40% of the value of exports, indicating that these are among the pillars of Beijing’s export economy. Sany Heavy Industry In this newspaper we have already examined the Chinese mechanical engineering giant Sinomach. But in the field of machine construction, Sany Heavy Industry also holds a prominent position, particularly in excavators, cranes, industrial elevators, and cement machinery. The company, based in Changsha (Hunan) since 1991, was founded by Liang Wengen, who had previously been an executive at a State-owned arms factory, and is its main shareholder. Sany had a 2023 turnover...
Read more

The EU Commission Plans for Rearmament and a Clean Industrial Deal

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series European news Following the European elections which took place on June 6th - 9th, the leaders of the Member States met on June 27th at the European Council. Ursula von der Leyen was nominated as president of the next European Commission, after she was chosen as the European People’s Party’s (EPP) Spitzenkandidat (“leading candidate”). The agreement also included the election of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa as president of the European Council, and the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Subsequently, on July 18th, Parliament elected von der Leyen as president of the Commission by an absolute majority, with 401 votes out of 719 MEPs. On September 17th, von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners to the European Parliament and, two days later, the Council adopted this list of...
Read more

Beijing in the Factory

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 16 Beijing in the Factory China Shock 2.0 . This means that Beijing has long since moved beyond being the world’s factory merely for T-shirts, shoes, refrigerators, or laptops. While the capital it has channelled abroad via the Silk Road exceeds $1 trillion, China has moved up the value chain to more technologically advanced and complex manufacturing. This is evident in the global battle over cars and electric vehicles, where Chinese exports have reached seven million units. The consequences of the first shocks have by no means been absorbed; the reaction to American deindustrialisation is among the forces that brought a chaotic huckster to the White House. Today, Europe is the epicentre of the second shock . Among the large corporate groups, their lobbies, and their political parties, there...
Read more

Rearmament and State Policies in the Battle for Minerals

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 13 In 2025, China was the only power to respond decisively to Donald Trump's trade war, forcing him into an autumn truce through tariffs and, primarily, by blocking exports of some critical minerals. According to the White House, Beijing made a mistake in using the nuclear weapon of its near-monopoly on rare earths, as it triggered a global rush to diversify supplies. That process is indeed underway, but given its high costs and long timescales, it does not seem able to neutralise, at least in the short term, the powerful mineral deterrent established by the Chinese government. A multilateral Trump The US government's counteroffensive is underway both domestically, in an attempt to rebuild an industrial sector for the extraction and processing of these substances in the US, and internationally, through a series of agreements. Among the mo...
Read more

The KPD After January 1919

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 9 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement The Weimar Republic took shape in the first six months of 1919, as Gustav Noske's Freikorps suppressed the revolution. The bourgeois parties of Weimar In the elections for the Constituent Assembly on January 19 th , 1919, the large corporate groups of German capital financed and steered the political forces. The four major banks alone contributed at least 30 million marks to the election funds of the various parties. At the head of the bourgeois forces were the great electricity magnates Walther Rathenau of AEG and Carl Friedrich von Siemens for the Democrats; Karl Helfferich of Deutsche Bank and Alfred Hugenberg of Krupp for the far-right nationalists; and major industrialists such as Hugo Stinnes for Gustav Stresemann's People's Party. Th...
Read more

Fox and “The Wall Street Journal” in the White House

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 14 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The mass media empire financed by Rupert Murdoch includes, in America, Fox Broadcasting, established in 1986, the 24-hour cable news channel Fox News , launched in 1996, and Fox Business , created in 2007; the same year Murdoch acquired the prestigious newspaper The Wall Street Journal . Murdoch, who since 2020 has also owned the streaming platform Tubi, first arrived in the country in the 1970s with the tabloid New York Post . In terms of trade and foreign policy, as well as style, the group covers a wide range of positions. Fox is the TV network that has most favoured Donald Trump and most benefited from his political rise, compared to its competitors. Within the group, Fox News is the brand most in tune with the current administration: some commentators have ...
Read more

Oil as a Weapon

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 12 In its editorial on May 17th, the Financial Times sounded the alarm over the looming energy crunch . In reality, the alarm has been sounding ever since Iran took full control of the Strait of Hormuz on March 4th, and even more so since the United States, despite the ceasefire of April 8th, imposed its own counter-blockade, with dozens of warships, on April 13th. Negotiations, whether genuine or feigned, Omani mediation, and American threats to finish the job — a campaign stretched on February 28th with the killings of Tehran’s leaders — have prolonged the stalemate in the third American war in the Persian Gulf. The alarm over the looming energy crisis became official on May 13th, when the International Energy Agency (IEA) published its report on the global oil market: More than ten weeks after the war in the Middle East began, mounting supply losses...
Read more

The Hurdles of the Energy Transition

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 15 From the series The world energy battle The war against Iran has highlighted the dependence on fossil fuels and the need for world economies to reduce dependence on the Middle East and on these energy sources. The European Union's “Green Deal” aims to achieve these goals, but the structure of the economy and the economic and social costs pose significant obstacles for the energy transition. Problems of renewables versus fossil fuels According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), during the period 2015-2024 global cumulative investments in renewable energy production amounted to $12.5 trillion, surpassing the $11.8 trillion invested in fossil fuels; despite this, the share of total energy supply accounted for by fossil fuels fell only from 85% in 1990 to 81% in 2023 [United Nations, Energy Statistics Pocketbook 2...
Read more

Lotta Comunista: The Origins 1943-1952

Guido La Barbera Contents 9. Preface to the English Edition 13. Preface 19. Useful dates 21. Chapter One «ONE OUGHT TO KNOW WITH WHOM ONE IS DEALING» 25. The balance-of-power theory 27. Theory and the ‘strategy-party’ 29. Chapter Two THE FOUNDRY AND THE PARTISAN STRUGGLE 31. The Savona group 39. Passion disciplined by reason 40. Never again a tool in the hands of others 41. The Genoa group 46. The Sestri Ponente group 48. The groups in Rome and Tuscany 52. The strength of GAAP: ‘only a handful’ 55. Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM 58. Reckoning with Bordiga...
Read more

Revolutionary Spain

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 8 From the series Spain 1936 Spain, Marx observed in 1854 in the article Revolutionary Spain , was the first European feudal State to develop absolutism in its most unmitigated form , but political and fiscal centralisation never really took hold there. Similarly, it was Spanish caravels that opened up the era of the world market, and the Kingdom of Spain was the first great bourgeois maritime-trading empire. Yet that early and rapid rise ended up transforming itself from a favourable precondition for development into the cause of Spain's subsequent failure. In fact, the maritime overextension of the empire, combined with the failed political and fiscal centralisation of the Iberian heartland, resulted in stagnation and a subsequently inglorious and protracted putrefaction . While the economic and social arteries were becoming scl...
Read more