John
Harlan was born in Boyle County, Kentucky, on 1st June, 1833.
He worked as a lawyer and county judge before joining the Union Army
during the American Civil War. Harlan
commanded an infantry regiment but was critical of Abraham
Lincoln and objected to the Emancipation
Proclamation.
After the war Harlan attacked the Thirteenth
Amendment which abolished slavery.
However, after the emergence of racist organizations such as the Ku
Klux Klan he changed his mind and became a supporter of the Radical
Republicans and the Reconstruction
Acts.
In 1877 President Rutherhood Hayes appointed
Harlan as a member of the Supreme Court.
Over the next few years Harlan showed he was a strong supporter of
African-American civil rights. In
1883 he dissented from the majority view that Congress could not punish
discrimination against African Americans by private persons. As a
member of the Supreme Court Harlan was
a consistent supporter of the Thirteenth Amendment
and Fourteenth Amendment. and warned that
African Americans were in danger of being consigned to a "permanent
condition of legal inferiority." In 1896 he was the only member
of the Supreme Court who believed that
segregation in railway cars was unconstitutional.
In 1897 New York Legislature passed a law that set the hours of bakers
at no more than ten hours a day or sixty a week. In 1905 the owner
of a bakery was fined $50 for violating the law. He appealed to the
Supreme Court and it voted 5-4 that the
law was unconstitutional. Harlan and Oliver
Wendell Holmes were two of those four justices who disagreed with
the decision that was to hold back the passing of social welfare legislation.
John Harlan died in Washington on
14th October, 1911.
(1)
John Harlan, dissenting opinion on the case of Homer Plessy, an African-American
who in 1896 appealed to the
Supreme
Court
after being convicted by a Louisiana court for riding in
a white only railway car.
The
white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And
so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and
in power. But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law,
there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens.
There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colour-blind and neither
knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.
The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man
as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his colour when
his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are
involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal,
the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached
the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment
by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.
Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of
8 million blacks. The destinies of the two races in this country are
indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that
the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate
to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse
race hate, what will more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling
of distrust between these races than state enactments, which, in fact,
proceed on the ground that coloured citizens are so inferior and degraded
that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white
citizens?
(2) In
1897 New York Legislature passed a law that set the hours of bakers
at no more than ten hours a day or sixty a week. In 1905 the owner
of a bakery was fined $50 for violating the law. He appealed to the
Supreme
Court
and it voted 5-4 that the law was unconstitutional. John Harlan was
one of those four justices who disagreed with this vote.
It is plain that this statute
was enacted in order to protect the physical well-being of those who
work in bakery and confectionery establishments. It may be that the
statute had its origin, in part, in the belief that employers and
employees in such establishments were not upon an equal footing, and
that the necessities of the latter often compelled them to submit
to such exactions as unduly taxed their strength. Be this as it may,
the statute must be taken as expressing the belief of the people of
New York that, as a general rule, and in the case of the average man,
labour in excess of sixty hours during a week in such establishments
may endanger the health of those who thus labour.
I submit that this Court will transcend its functions if it assumes
to annul the statute of New York. It must be remembered that this
statute does not apply to all kinds of business. It applies only to
work in bakery and confectionery establishments, in which, as all
know, the air constantly breathed by workmen is not as pure and helpful
as that to be found in some other establishments or out-of-doors.
Professor Hirt in his treatise on the Diseases of the Workers
has said: "The labour of the bakers is among the hardest and
most laborious imaginable, because it has to be performed under conditions
injurious to the health of those engaged in it."
(3)
John Harlan explained why he had supported restrictions on the activities
of the Standard Oil Company in 1890 (May, 1911).
All who recall the condition
of the country in 1890 will remember that there was everywhere, among
the people generally, a deep feeling of unrest. The nation had been
rid of human slavery, but the conviction was universal that the country
was in real danger from another kind of slavery sought to be fastened
on the American people, namely, the slavery that would result from
aggregations of capital in the hands of a few individuals and corporations
controlling, for their own profit and advantage exclusively, the entire
business of the country, including the production and sale of the
necessaries of life. Such a danger was thought to be then imminent,
and all felt that it must be met firmly and by such statutory regulations
as would adequately protect the people against oppression and wrong.
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