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Not Getting Them Young

Ted Gest

in Crime and Politics: Big Government's Erratic Campaign for Law and Order

Violent crime is committed disproportionately by young men, but government never has conducted a coherent, aggressive campaign against serious juvenile delinquency. The fragmentation has been evident ... More

Violent crime is committed disproportionately by young men, but government never has conducted a coherent, aggressive campaign against serious juvenile delinquency. The fragmentation has been evident since the late 1960s, when federal authority was divided between health and justice agencies. A 1974 law created a federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to take charge. The law set progressive standards, but the administration of Ronald Reagan tried to kill the agency in the early 1980s and downgraded it after Congress refused to end funding. The Reagan Justice Department did forge an alliance with the MacArthur Foundation to start a long‐term study of juvenile crime's causes. Meanwhile, a steady increase in arrests of juveniles prompted to require that more teen suspects be tried in adult courts, even when studies showed the tactic ineffective in preventing repeat criminality. Congressional Republicans helped enact a large “juvenile accountability” program designed to provide federal aid to programs that got tough on young lawbreakers. Some measures failed on a broad scale, such as ‘boot camps’ aimed at instilling more discipline in delinquents. Despite many promising crime prevention programs, the Congress under Republicans control starting in 1995 generally refused to fund them. Juvenile crime arrests declined sharply since the mid‐1990s, but there was no solid proof of what caused the change, whether government programs, the improved economy, or a lower number of teens in the population.Less

The Monopoly Enigma, the Reagan Administration's Antitrust Experiment, and the Global Economy

Louis Galambos

in Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture

In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration drastically altered American antitrust policy, virtually eliminating Section 2 cases involving monopolies. This chapter provides a context for that decision by ... More

In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration drastically altered American antitrust policy, virtually eliminating Section 2 cases involving monopolies. This chapter provides a context for that decision by tracing the efforts that the federal government made since 1890 to reconcile an opposition to highly concentrated economic power with the even stronger enthusiasm Americans have always had for the economic success they associated with the nation's largest enterprises. In this setting, judges and government lawyers struggled over the years to come up with a clear concept of monopoly. In the global economy of the late 20th century, the Reagan policy innovation solved that problem and proved to be timely and significant. The new policy allowed American firms to get up to global scale, either through strategic alliances or through mergers that would not have been allowed under previous administrations.Less

To Washington: The Department of Justice and the Supreme Court

Jeffrey D. Gonda

in Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement

The fourth chapter considers how and why the Department of Justice chose to intervene on the NAACP’s behalf in the cases. It explores the overlapping political pressures influencing President Harry ... More

The fourth chapter considers how and why the Department of Justice chose to intervene on the NAACP’s behalf in the cases. It explores the overlapping political pressures influencing President Harry S. Truman’s administration and the growth of a newly strengthened partnership between the NAACP and the federal government in the nation’s courts. The chapter then examines the presentation of the cases before Supreme Court and the substance of Chief Justice Fred Vinson’s opinions in favor of the NAACP’s clients in Shelley v. Kraemer and Hurd v. Hodge. Finally, the chapter assesses some of the popular reactions to the outcome of the cases and what black communities hoped the victory would signal in the years ahead.Less

The United States The Competition Law System and the Country’s Norms

Harry First, Eleanor Fox, and Daniel E. Hemli

in The Design of Competition Law Institutions: Global Norms, Local Choices

This chapter discusses the history, institutional structure, mandate, procedural characteristics, and agency performance of the competition law system of the United States. The US enforcement system ... More

This chapter discusses the history, institutional structure, mandate, procedural characteristics, and agency performance of the competition law system of the United States. The US enforcement system is complex. There are two major federal enforcement agencies and fifty state enforcement agencies, plus five federal districts or territories, and enforcement through private litigation. The state attorneys general can enforce federal antitrust law as well as state antitrust law when state residents are injured. The two US federal agencies are the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission. The former is a division of the executive branch; the latter is an independent regulatory agency. The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice follows the bifurcated judicial model, investigating cases and bringing enforcement actions in federal courts of general jurisdiction. The Federal Trade Commission, consisting of five commissioners, follows the integrated agency model, with power to investigate and adjudicate cases internally, subject to subsequent appellate court review.Less

Enhancing Federal Enforcement

Daniel A. Crane

in The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement

This chapter considers ways to enhance the enforcement powers of the two agencies: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division, without changing the institutional status quo. It ... More

This chapter considers ways to enhance the enforcement powers of the two agencies: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division, without changing the institutional status quo. It turns out that the FTC has more to say than the Antitrust Division. There is more latitude for experimentation here. Primarily this concerns the improvements on the norm-creation capabilities and powers in relation to the roles of institutional players such as generalist judges, private litigants, and the juries. The FTC is analyzed as a distinct antitrust institution but the judicial deference raises issues not distinctive to the FTC, rather they are a part of the broader fabric of administrative law.Less

Conservatives and the Courts

Michael Greve

in Crisis of Conservatism?: The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, and American Politics After Bush

This chapter inventories the accomplishments and defeats of the conservative legal movement. It argues that the conservative legal movement has a high degree of professionalism, financial stability ... More

This chapter inventories the accomplishments and defeats of the conservative legal movement. It argues that the conservative legal movement has a high degree of professionalism, financial stability and intellectual capital. The question now is whether it possesses sufficient intellectual and organizational resources to adapt successfully to a changed environment of institutional and political hostility. The chapter concludes that it does, although it will be severely tested in the process. The chapter examines the conservative legal movement's record in four areas: court appointments, litigation, administration, and institutionalization. It then goes on to analyze the movement's foundational commitment—originalism—and predicts a reformulations of the concept with a keener appreciation of originalism's limitations and a greater emphasis on complementary legal values of constitutional rights, structure, and limited government.Less

A Constitutional Purge: Southern Democracy, Lynch Law, and the Roosevelt Justice Department

in Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown

This chapter analyzes the Roosevelt Justice Department's program to extend federal protection of individual rights, most importantly for African Americans. Special attention is given to the creative ... More

This chapter analyzes the Roosevelt Justice Department's program to extend federal protection of individual rights, most importantly for African Americans. Special attention is given to the creative efforts of the Justice Department's newly created Civil Rights Section (CRS) to revive, at times in cooperation with the NAACP, “dead-letter” Reconstruction-era civil rights laws through controversial prosecutions. Focus is placed on the Justice Department efforts in the areas of the white primary, the poll tax, lynching, and police brutality, through which prosecutions, it is argued, the CRS aided in constructing rights-expanding norms on the Supreme Court. In developing this argument, the extent to which World War II enabled the Roosevelt administration to carry out a campaign in the courts that sought to make American democracy more inclusive and to punish those responsible for violent attacks against black Americans in the South is also considered.Less

The Curious Case of Dual Federal Enforcement

Daniel A. Crane

in The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement

The debates between two competing conceptualizations of antitrust led to the creation of two federal antitrust agencies: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department's Antitrust ... More

The debates between two competing conceptualizations of antitrust led to the creation of two federal antitrust agencies: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. There is something curious about the dual-agency structure of federal antitrust enforcement, despite the fact that the two agencies are not purely redundant and that overlapping agency jurisdiction is not unusual. This chapter shows that the design of the antitrust agencies was not the product of a unified draftsman but that the structure itself was inelegant, redundant, and often problematic. Efforts to change this structure have repeatedly failed. Whether this sentiment is practical common sense or just timidity, the time will come when political forces transpire to bring the American dual-agency structure into the public spotlight.Less

The Impact of Mississippi Litigation on National Voting Rights Law

Frank R. Parker

in Black Votes Count: Political Empowerment in Mississippi After 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 enabled and empowered black citizens especially in the South to exercise their voting rights and elect the representatives of their choice, and this act is considered to ... More

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 enabled and empowered black citizens especially in the South to exercise their voting rights and elect the representatives of their choice, and this act is considered to be a landmark move by Congress for promoting equality throughout the South. Prior to the act, blacks were denied their right to vote. The Justice Department barred the implementation of more than two thousand discriminatory voting-law changes under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Congress amended section 2 of the act which had prohibited voting practices and procedures that could have resulted in discrimination. Furthermore, the amendment also eliminated the requirement of proving discriminatory intent in minority vote dilution lawsuits. The chapter finally analyses criticisms over the expansion of federal power to protect the right to vote.Less

Rebuilding Institutions and Redefining Issues: The Reagan Justice Department and the Reconstruction of Civil Rights

Richard L. Pacelle

in Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, the Conservative Movement, and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama

This chapter argues that the Reagan administration applied three overarching strategies to use the courts to turn back the clock on civil rights: first, the replacement of federal judges with those ... More

This chapter argues that the Reagan administration applied three overarching strategies to use the courts to turn back the clock on civil rights: first, the replacement of federal judges with those who supported retrenchment on civil rights; second, the redefinition of rights and responsibilities to facilitate the rewriting of legal precedent; and third, the reconstruction of government mechanisms that dealt with civil rights policies. Reagan used the Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor General to institutionalize conservative definitions of civil rights.Less

“A Multitude of Complexes”: Finding Common Ground with Louis Adamic

Matthew M. Briones

in Jim and Jap Crow: A Cultural History of 1940s Interracial America

This chapter talks about how Kikuchi suspected that his belief in his alienable rights as a citizen would be severely challenged. A year earlier, Congress had passed the Alien Registration Act, ... More

This chapter talks about how Kikuchi suspected that his belief in his alienable rights as a citizen would be severely challenged. A year earlier, Congress had passed the Alien Registration Act, requiring the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens over the age of fourteen. The law had passed in large part due to unsubstantiated rumors of fifth column activity and espionage on the part of enemy aliens, especially German Americans. At the same time, the Department of Justice and the FBI were compiling a short list of dangerous or subversive aliens—German, Italian, and Japanese—who were to be arrested as soon as war broke out with their particular countries. The chapter shows how Kikuchi viewed the situation through a racial lens—citing Hitler's anti-Jewish pogroms—whereas he had been preoccupied with class after his migratory work in the San Joaquin Valley.Less

US Involvement in the Colombian Justice and Peace Process

Annie R. Bird

in US Foreign Policy on Transitional Justice

Chapter 5 examines the US involvement in the Colombian Justice and Peace Process. During the negotiations of the Justice and Peace Law, Congress advocated for strengthening the provisions on ... More

Chapter 5 examines the US involvement in the Colombian Justice and Peace Process. During the negotiations of the Justice and Peace Law, Congress advocated for strengthening the provisions on accountability for paramilitary leaders who had committed serious human rights violations, while the Department of Justice pushed to maintain its ability to extradite those leaders who were also drug traffickers. A stronger law was passed in 2005, and the Justice Department and USAID provided extensive support to operationalize it. A few years into the process, Colombia extradited several paramilitary leaders to the United States on drug trafficking charges, which some observers believed undermined the justice and peace process.Less

THE PREVAILING WINDS

Marion Elizabeth Rodgers

in Mencken: The American Iconoclast

America's entry into war on April 2, 1917, turned Mencken's life upside down. As a German-American now writing for the New York Evening Mail, he became the target of super-patriots. George Creel ... More

America's entry into war on April 2, 1917, turned Mencken's life upside down. As a German-American now writing for the New York Evening Mail, he became the target of super-patriots. George Creel launched the Espionage Act, containing some of the broadest and most restrictive sanctions against civil liberties and free speech that the country ever witnessed. As a German-American who felt separated from American society, Mencken began to gain insight on another group he had derided years earlier: African-Americans. Together with James Weldon Johnson, they urged black Americans to start writing realistically about racial issues, including lynching. Mencken also met Philip Goodman, and wrote A Book of Prefaces and Damn a Book of Calumny, both of which attacked American literature and conformity head on.Less

Black Advancement and Federal Intervention

Robert E. Luckett

in Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement

This chapter examines Joe T. Patterson's advocacy of racist principles to thwart black advancement and federal intervention. By 1960, the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum as ... More

This chapter examines Joe T. Patterson's advocacy of racist principles to thwart black advancement and federal intervention. By 1960, the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum as activists and their organizations made better organized and more sustained efforts to lift up African Americans and challenge their second-class status in the South. Over the next two years, Patterson and white southerners everywhere witnessed some of the most sustained direct action protests in American history, including the looming sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. This chapter first considers Patterson's opposition to the funding of the Sovereignty Commission's publicity campaign called Citizens' Council Forum, along with his efforts to defund the Citizens' Council. It then discusses Patterson's criticism of the US Department of Justice for defending the civil rights movement and the case Bailey v. Patterson filed by Sam Bailey against him and the state of Mississippi over the continued enforcement of segregation on interstate buses. It also explores Patterson's stand on the issue of voting rights for African Americans in Mississippi.Less

Braying Jackasses

Robert E. Luckett

in Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement

This chapter examines the implications of James Meredith's attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 for the Jim Crow South and the white leadership in Mississippi. The central ... More

This chapter examines the implications of James Meredith's attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 for the Jim Crow South and the white leadership in Mississippi. The central question arising from the Meredith crisis was how far members of the white hierarchy would be willing to go to maintain segregation in higher education. Ross Barnett and the Citizens' Council forced a reluctant federal government to intervene, resulting in the eruption of violence on the campus. Others, like Joe T. Patterson, were more willing to bend in order to maintain as much power as possible. This chapter first discusses Meredith's fight for admission to Ole Miss that culminated in Meredith v. Fair as well as Patterson's attempt to keep Meredith out of the university. It then considers the US Supreme Court ruling in favor of Meredith and the US Department of Justice's involvement in the case. It also explores Patterson's the behind-the-scenes efforts to finally allow Meredith to enter the campus.Less