Reparations for Slavery and Discrimination

We've heard a great deal, of late, about demands by African American "representatives" that somebody pay them monetary damages for centuries of slavery and discrimination. Various law professors and high-powered trial lawyers announced, in 2001, that they planned to file "reparations" lawsuits against the U. S. government and various American corporations. Damage amounts discussed ranged as high as 8 trillion dollars [1].

Let's leave aside politically incorrect questions about who's worse off, American descendants of Africans kidnapped into slavery or their distant cousins still living in Africa, and go right to the only question of interest to lawyers: who can be made to pony up. The U. S. government doesn't have any money unless it taxes you and me to get it. And slavery ended back in 1865 before my ancestors came to America. So I don't feel any personal responsibility for the U. S. government's sins back then. Fortunately, U. S. history clearly identifies who's guilty and who's innocent. In its 1857 Dred Scott decision, a U. S. Supreme Court dominated by Democrats ruled that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, . . . (and) they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" [2].

A few years later a Republican president, Abe Lincoln, and a Republican Congress led the U. S. in a painful civil war which overturned the Dred Scott decision and freed the slaves. Abe Lincoln was assassinated for his trouble. But the Republican Congress continued the good fight.

It framed and recommended to the states three constitutional amendments to end slavery, extend the rights of citizenship to the freed Negro slaves, and guarantee their voting rights. Mainly Republican legislatures in the constitutionally required number of states ratified the three Amendments [3].

Then the Republican Congress passed seven Enforcement Acts as the Amendments had expressly authorized and promised. For obvious reasons, Congress did not trust Southern state courts to enforce the rights of African Americans. So the Enforcement Acts shifted a lot of unpleasant responsibilities from state courts to federal courts.

Federal judges didn't want any part of that: they thought that this kind of jurisprudence was beneath their dignity. So the U. S. Supreme Court found various pretexts to nullify most of the enforcement legislation. As a result, African American civil rights remained only a dream. Then, in the 1890's, the Democrats, the party of slavery, finally gained control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. They promptly repealed what little of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment Enforcement Acts the Supreme Court had not already gutted. The dream then disappeared entirely [4].

Democrats continued to trample Negro civil rights for another 70 years. In the twenty-six major civil rights votes between 1933 and 1964, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes. The landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was passed with overwhelming Republican support despite the obstruction of Democrats. In the House, 96 Democrats and only 34 Republicans voted against its final passage. In the Senate, 23 Democrats and only 6 Republicans opposed ending the filibuster against it [5].

In light of all the relevant historical evidence, it's clear that the slavery and discrimination lawsuits should not target every American and should definitely not target Republicans. The Supreme Court is more to blame than anyone else. And the Democratic Party is a close second [6].

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court doesn't have any money except what Congress appropriates for it. To be sure, the guilty justices undoubtedly have decendants, probably running into the hundreds or even thousands by now. Perhaps the African American "representatives" could hit each of their homeowners' insurance policies for a million dollars or so. But, next to $8 trillion, that's a drop in the bucket.

One could make a cogent argument that the entire legal establishment shares responsibility for policy innovations inflicted on "We the People" by the Supreme Court. Lawyers initiate every case the Court decides and also provide most of the intellectual firepower used to sell fraudulent Court decisions to a gullible public. Legal scholars, for example, thought up the evolving Constitution scam and the substantive due process scam [7].

As early as 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America was actually ruled by an "aristocracy" of lawyers with the Supreme Court at its head. Our "aristocracy" of lawyers now has somewhere in the neighborhood of one million members. If they were all to pay their fair share of the Supreme Court's $8 trillion debt, that would work out to a nice, neat $8 million apiece. Eight million is probably more than most of them could afford [8].

To be sure, a few tort lawyers have become billionaires by successfully playing the class action lawsuit game. However, they're greatly outnumbered by legions of neighborhood lawyers who make a modest living probating wills and handling divorces. A way could undoubtedly be found to tax the lawyers according to their ability to pay. Courts do that sort of thing all the time. Nevertheless, it's probably not realistic to expect the one million lawyers to come up with more than a trillion dollars or so. That averages out to 1.0 million apiece; some would pay a lot more, some a bit less.

There's nobody left to pay the other $7 trillion except the Democratic Party. Democrats collect about a billion dollars, more or less, in annual campaign contributions from various lobbyists, labor unions, and Hollywood celebrities. Even if the African American "representatives" got that entire cash flow, it would take the Party 7000 years to pay off the whole debt. Besides, the lobbyists, union bosses, etc. would quit donating if they didn't think they were getting what they were paying for. So it appears there is only one way out. All Democrats must be asked to pony up [9].

The United States has somewhere around 50 million registered Democrats. Since they're a lot more guilty than the rest of us, it seems fair that they should come up with the remaining $7 trillion. That's only about $140,000 apiece.

NOTES & CITATIONS

1. See the March 27, 2002 MSNBC Article, The Case For And Against Slavery Reparations. See also the Adversity.Net Web Site, http://www.adversity.net/reparations/news1.htm.

2. The quotation is from the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford. A transcript can be found on the Internet at http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Scott/. See also the online essay, A Scam is Born.

3. The three Amendments were the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

4. See Carr, Robert K.. Federal Protection of Civil Rights: Quest for a Sword, Cornell University Press, 1947, page 45. See also the two online essays, Congress Shall Not Have the Power and Racism In the Court.

5. See the CongressLink article at http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html.

6. Prior to the Civil War, of course, the Democratic Party resolutely defended slavery. At the constitutional convention, Southern Democrats demanded a degree of constitutional protection for slavery, or else no deal. They pushed to stretch that constitutional protection for eight decades, finally starting the Civil War over this issue. The Supreme Court, of course, egged them on.

7. Descriptions of the the evolving Constitution scam and the substantive due process scam can be found on the Internet.

8. DeTocqueville's observations about lawyers can be found in Chapter 13 of Democracy in America.

9. As you've probably noticed, this discussion ignores all considerations related to the time value of money.