Ethnicity, Empathy, and Eugenics

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzick wrote 'Empathy' on 1927 Supreme Court might have saved thousands from the knife. The article is primarily about "Sonia Sotomayor's assertion that a judge's ethnic and socioeconomic background might actually influence how he or she interprets the law." And it uses a 1927 eugenics case called Buck vs. Bell to explore cultural bias in Supreme Court decisions and interpretation of law.

The Buck vs. Bell case comes from a particularly dark time in U.S. history--a time when eugenics was routinely practiced on both people with disabilities and people who were just deemed "inferior," such as people who were poor. In Buck vs. Bell there was an 8 - 1 vote in favor of forced sterilization for people who were considered "inferior." Hiltzick questions, does this "reflect basic legal principles or establishment culture?"

To our more modern sensibilities, outright killing or serializing the "unfit" may seem immediately appalling. But eugenics is much more insidious and subtle. The actual definition (source) is "the study of, or belief in, the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)" Eugenics has been practiced on autistic people in the past and is at great risk of being practiced on us in the future.

Back to the LA Times, Hiltzick asks historian William E. Leuchtenburg, "Might the outcome of Buck vs. Bell have been different were the court not monolithic?" And Leuchtenburg answers, "It's hard to believe that one or two women justices might not have made a difference,...They might have made the other justices confront what was at issue."

Why might women have made a difference? The keyword in the article is "diversity." Diversity, that thing that including people with minority cultural, ethnic, or socioeconomic backgrounds provides. Diversity, that thing which eugenics seeks to extinguish.

More on this in a few hours--