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Imbeciles - The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (Paperback)
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Imbeciles - The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (Paperback)
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Loot Price R482
Discovery Miles 4 820
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction One of
America's great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court's
infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of
"undesirable" citizens the law of the land In 1927, the Supreme
Court handed down a ruling so disturbing, ignorant, and cruel that
it stands as one of the great injustices in American history. In
Imbeciles, bestselling author Adam Cohen exposes the court's
decision to allow the sterilization of a young woman it wrongly
thought to be "feebleminded" and to champion the mass eugenic
sterilization of undesirable citizens for the greater good of the
country. The 8-1 ruling was signed by some of the most revered
figures in American law-including Chief Justice William Howard
Taft, a former U.S. president; and Louis Brandeis, a progressive
icon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, considered by many the greatest
Supreme Court justice in history, wrote the majority opinion,
including the court's famous declaration "Three generations of
imbeciles are enough." Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v.
Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A
gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against
powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic
measures were necessary to save the nation from being "swamped with
incompetence." At the center was Carrie Buck, who was born into a
poor family in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taken in by a foster
family, until she became pregnant out of wedlock. She was then
declared "feebleminded" and shipped off to the Colony for
Epileptics and Feeble-Minded. Buck v. Bell unfolded against the
backdrop of a nation in the thrall of eugenics, which many
Americans thought would uplift the human race. Congress embraced
this fervor, enacting the first laws designed to prevent
immigration by Italians, Jews, and other groups charged with being
genetically inferior. Cohen shows how Buck arrived at the colony at
just the wrong time, when influential scientists and politicians
were looking for a "test case" to determine whether Virginia's new
eugenic sterilization law could withstand a legal challenge. A
cabal of powerful men lined up against her, and no one stood up for
her-not even her lawyer, who, it is now clear, was in collusion
with the men who wanted her sterilized. In the end, Buck's case was
heard by the Supreme Court, the institution established by the
founders to ensure that justice would prevail. The court could have
seen through the false claim that Buck was a threat to the gene
pool, or it could have found that forced sterilization was a
violation of her rights. Instead, Holmes, a scion of several
prominent Boston Brahmin families, who was raised to believe in the
superiority of his own bloodlines, wrote a vicious, haunting
decision upholding Buck's sterilization and imploring the nation to
sterilize many more. Holmes got his wish, and before the madness
ended some sixty to seventy thousand Americans were sterilized.
Cohen overturns cherished myths and demolishes lauded figures in
relentless pursuit of the truth. With the intellectual force of a
legal brief and the passion of a front-page expose, Imbeciles is an
ardent indictment of our champions of justice and our optimistic
faith in progress, as well as a triumph of American legal and
social history.
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