Blyew v. United States

Blyew v. United States was a case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in April 1872 addressing the civil rights of African Americans, as well as states' rights issues. The case involved the testimony of African American victims of an attack by two White people using an axe that left four people dead. Kentucky state law prohibited the testimony of a "Negro" against a white man and barred African Americans from serving on juries.

The case was eventually moved to Federal court, where the attackers were convicted. The State of Kentucky then appealed the case to the Supreme Court citing states rights in defense of its laws prohibiting African Americans from testifying against Whites. The case was a test of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Supreme Court ruled that victims were not entitled to protection from the state law because word "affected" in the law did not apply to victims of crimes who are not defendants in a case.[1] Noah Swayne (the first Republican appointed to the Supreme Court) and Joseph Bradley dissented.[2]

The civil rights legislation was subsequently modified and comments in the dissent are noted for putting forth a group right to the adequate protection of the law.[3] Justice William Strong wrote that any case involving an African American witness could be brought to a Federal Court if the court had ruled for the victims and upheld the right of African Americans to testify in court.[4]

References
  1. Higginbotham Jr, A. Leon (1998). Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process. Oxford University Press. pp. 79–80. ISBN 0-19-512288-7.
  2. Smith, Gerald L.; McDaniel, Karen Cotton; Hardin, John A. (2015). The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia. University Press of Kentucky. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-8131-6066-5.
  3. "Blyew v. United States 80 U.S. 581 (1872)". Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
  4. Scaturro, Frank J. (2000). The Supreme Court's Retreat from Reconstruction: A Distortion of Constitutional Jurisprudence. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 20. ISBN 0-313-31105-6.

Further reading
  • The Family of Jack and Sallie Foster, Blyew v. United States,” Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, accessed March 7, 2018
  • Goldstein, Robert D. (February 1989). ""Blyew": Variations on a Jurisdictional Theme". Stanford Law Review. 41 (3): 469–566. doi:10.2307/1228879. JSTOR 1228879.
  • Blyew v. United States, 80 U.S. 13 Wall. 581 (1871)
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