Asa Kowals-Rose | Blog for RFILP

These Chapters explored the history of the Supreme Court in the second half of the nineteenth century. Much of the court’s work during this period had to do with issues surrounding the American Civil War, as well as business issues during the Gilded Age. I think this era further established that courts—including the Supreme Court—are never immune to politics or personal bias, and often make decisions in accordance with unsavory values rather than the will of the Constitution. I feel that this explains the court’s willingness to apply the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to corporations, while denying them to black Americans; the judges who made these decisions were products of their racist society, and often had ties to industry. This has lasting consequences: one of the decisions made during this period was in the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which established the concept of corporate personhood, and provided precedent for the 2010 Citizens United ruling.

Nitpicking time: Once again, I found a minor passage in which Irons mischaracterizes history. On page 183, he refers to the Battle of Antietam as a “disastrous defeat” for the Union. While the battle was extremely costly—the bloodiest day in American history, in fact—it is wrong to view it as a defeat for the Union. The battle was one of two occasions on which Robert E. Lee marched Confederate troops into Union territory, and on both occasions, he was forced to retreat. Lincoln viewed it as a political victory, and used the battle as an opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln demoted McClellan because of his failure to capitalize on Lee’s retreat, not because the battle itself was lost. This is insignificant with regard to the main issues discussed in the text, but I find it annoying that Irons misconstrues information like this.